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Kansas GOP Leaders Unite to Smother Statehouse News . This is what William Allen White would think.

Legendary Emporia Gazette editor William Allen White stands guard at this one-ton limestone statue at the Kansas Statehouse. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

Of the four white limestone statues of notable Kansans that stand in the Statehouse rotunda, half are journalists.

One of those is Topeka publisher and politician Arthur Capper. The other is legendary Emporia journalist William Allen White.

The presence of these towering icons in the Statehouse sends a powerful message: Journalists will hold lawmakers accountable. We watch what they do and tell our readers, viewers and listeners about it. These images serve as an implicit rebuke of Republican Speaker Dan Hawkins’ petty decision to ban the news media from the House of Representatives.

If those statues of White and Capper could come to life today, they would step off their pedestals, enter Hawkins’ office, and raise holy hell.

What do you mean by banning the press? the one-ton monoliths would thunder down on the speaker. How could you treat the eyes and ears of the people in the Statehouse with such contempt?

I’m not going to speculate on how Hawkins would react when confronted by two sentient limestone figures.

In the real world, however, the ban’s defenders pointed to lawmakers’ need for an open and accessible workspace. Hawkins’ spokeswoman cited “congestion” issues in a conversation with Kansas Reflector editor Sherman Smith.

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To which I respond: nonsense.

Journalists have had access to the House of Representatives for more than a century. In recent decades, many more reporters worked in the Statehouse than now. This supposed congestion has never been a problem before, so the chance of this suddenly becoming a problem seems vanishingly small to me. I know many of the accomplished men and women who make up the Statehouse press corps. They are more than willing to give lawmakers all the space they need.

When the ban was announced in an email to journalists, no explanation was given. Only after Smith’s story was published was he given the courtesy of a nonsensical explanation. His story about the ban — in which he cites repeated and vituperative lies from Hawkins about the Kansas news media — provides ample evidence that the move was motivated by animosity.

You might also recall that the speaker had not even put up for a vote a resolution condemning the unconstitutional raid on the Marion County Record newspaper.

Senate spokesman Mike Pirner explains to Statehouse reporters John Hanna and Martin Hawver that they will not be able to sit down with reporters on the Senate floor during the 2022 session. (Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector)

The same was true three years ago, when Senate President Ty Masterson denied reporters access to his chamber. At the time, it was explained that this was because so many people wanted to cover the legislature. Such a justification not only defies plausibility, but also sails past it, leading to hitherto unacknowledged vistas of ‘bunkum’.

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Others might protest that the news media is no longer simply reporting the news as it is, but instead pushing a political agenda. This is not true, and such critics ignore history.

White ran for governor on an anti-Ku Klux Klan platform. Capper ran for governor and won, after which he served in the U.S. Senate for thirty years. These men spoke loudly in the heated political discussions of the day. We forget that all too easilyhe pushed for White and Capper’s time was far more partial, far more biased, ver more focused on specific policy outcomes, and then on the 2025 press.

What these men would tell us today is, I believe, exactly what I am telling you in this column. The news media exists to serve the public. We exist to serve 3 million Kansans. They can’t drive to Topeka on a whim or watch hours of streaming YouTube videos.

Regardless of what Hawkins said to Smith, journalists do not put ourselves above ordinary Kansans. We cover the Statehouse because we serve them.

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His contempt for us is contempt for them.

Neither White nor Capper will be stepping down from their pedestal anytime soon. They’ve left for the great newsroom in the sky, where deadlines can be pushed back indefinitely. However, their words, their deeds and their deeds remain. We know that White and Capper stood for responsive and open government. They stood for exact principles that Hawkins, and before him Masterson, tried to suppress.

“You say that freedom of speech is not for times of stress, and I respond with the sad truth that it is only in times of stress that freedom of speech is in danger,” White wrote in one of his best-known editorials: “To a Concerned Friend.” “Nobody questions it on quiet days because it’s not necessary. And the reverse is also true; only when free expression is suppressed is it necessary, and when it is necessary it is of the utmost importance for justice.”

Hawkins and Masterson have rejected the news media and the First Amendment. In doing so, they have rejected the history and heritage of Kansas.

You cannot pretend to honor these men in your own roundabout while spitting on those who are fulfilling their noble mission today.

Clay Wirestone is Opinion Editor of Kansas Reflector. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policy or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own comments, here.

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