How limited access to state officials hurts reporting in Missouri

Under Gov Jay Nixon (D-MO), Missouri keeps a tight leash on information, funneling media inquiries for all agencies through a centralized public information office and regularly blocking department heads and agency experts from talking to reporters. The trend is part of a larger pattern that reporters and scholars have observed in other states and the federal government, of course. But, in the view of some observers, the shifts in Missouri have been especially extreme -- in addition to the routine restrictions, Nixon is one of only two governors to “win” a Golden Padlock award from the nonprofit group Investigative Reporters and Editors, for the secrecy surrounding the state’s death-penalty protocols.

Phil Brooks and Bob Priddy, two of the deans of the state press corps, are probably the two most vocal critics of the state of affairs in the Show-Me State. Priddy said, on the occasion of his retirement after 40 years with the Missourinet radio news service, that “the only problem [with Nixon’s press shop] is that it’s not a communications office at all, it’s a stonewall office. And this is the worst it’s been, ever.” Brooks agrees: “This is completely the opposite of access to the heart of government that I have had from 1970 to the beginning of the Nixon administration six years ago.”