The old aphorism that you never should quarrel with somebody who buys ink by the barrel may become less and less valid with the ascension of Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry to Louisiana governor next year.
Landry won outright the contest earlier this month and has hit the ground running. Among the things he has begun preparing for is influencing the new Legislature, set to have supermajorities of his party in both chambers, in its selection of leadership with which he is comfortable. Already his expressed preference for GOP state Sen. Cameron Henry appears to have landed Henry the Senate presidency for next term.
But there’s still a House speakership up for grabs, with multiple reports that Landry hasn’t stumped for a particular individual but did provide input, accepted by the chamber’s GOP, that it settle upon one candidate and that the membership vote only for that candidate when the time comes in early January. In fact, Landry’s transition office released a letter, signed by every Republican attempting to win that vote and Landry, agreeing to that. This will prevent a scenario such as in 2020 when a Republican-preferred Republican lost out to a Democrat-preferred Republican in the speaker’s contest, which diluted GOP efforts to enact a conservative agenda over the course of the term.
This story was reported succinctly from The Hayride website, known as a conservative opinion site whose articles also contain news. Almost simultaneously, about 11 hours after the letter was produced, a story on the subject appeared on the Louisiana Illuminator site, ostensibly a news site but which injects left-wing opinion into its designated news articles.
Except that story was much less complete and accurate about the events reported by The Hayride, written by its publisher Scott McKay. Julia O’Donoghue, who once covered state politics for the New Orleans Times-Picayune before it was subsumed into the Baton Rouge Advocate chain, authored that one, which only mentioned the apparent half-dozen speaker candidates – actually a later addition to the piece, where the original had mentioned only two – met with Landry, without any mention of an agreement or what it constituted or who was involved.
It's obvious what happened – the Hayride scooped the Illuminator because the speaker candidates kept O’Donoghue in the dark while alerting McKay, whom Landry also contacted. Landry generally is a fan of Hayride pieces for its analysis of Louisiana politics and the site is viewed widely by GOP legislators. By contrast, Illuminator pieces often attempt to criticize conservative issue preferences, sometimes being extremely selective in the information and data reported to slant stories if not making inaccurate assertions, to prop up a leftist agenda.
Landry’s campaign frequently gave many media outlets short shrift, particularly those it felt tending to inject bias against him particularly and Republicans and conservatives generally. He and his campaign generally ignored Illuminator attempts for information and sometimes stiffed the Advocate and Gannett newspapers as well. He only participated in one of several televised candidate forums organized by various media outlets and interest groups, apparently without harming his campaigning.
This isn’t that surprising as technology increasingly gives candidates and government officials the ability to cut out intermediaries like the media to go directly to voters and citizens, while preserving them the option to reward favored outlets with in-depth news and leaving others flailing. As the media environment has become harsher for survival of traditional outlets with readership declines, having a politician treating an outlet unfavorably has reversed the relationship. Instead of the media being able to savage officials who were uncooperative, now officials can starve the media of the information that grabs consumers with little penalty but which causes difficulty for the media they ignore.
Of course, the two channels can intertwine. On several occasions, Landry authored opinion pieces that appeared on The Hayride. And officials have the ability to cooperate selectively, as demonstrated since the election with Landry and other Republicans appearing more willing at least toanswer Illuminator inquiries.
Regardless, within weeks from now in Louisiana media outlets that traditionally have shown hostility towards a conservative agenda, whether confined to opinion pieces, may find their news gathering in the realm of politics significantly more challenging and operating at a disadvantage to outlets that have demonstrated more tolerance, if not affinity, for disseminating news and opinion that put conservative issue preferences in a favorable light. Actual reporting, not mere stenography of talking points released by leftist interests, might become more common among Louisiana’s media.
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