Colorado’s Democratic Attorney General, Phil Weiser, who is running for governor, said he is open to creative public policy ideas that might help sustain local journalism.
The candidate’s comments came Thursday on the opening night of the Colorado Press Association’s annual convention held at the Delta Hotel in Thornton.
Tim Regan-Porter, who runs the association, interviewed Weiser at the event.
Regan-Porter said he was doing so not as a journalist but in his role as CEO of the press advocacy nonprofit. He said his goal wasn’t to try and pin the officeholder-candidate down on policy specifics or legal cases, but rather to create a space for dialogue about issues facing the local news industry.
Still, public policy did come up.
Unlike the state’s current Democratic governor, Jared Polis, who is term-limited, Weiser did not antagonize a large portion of the state’s press corps when asked about a state requirement that governments publish public and legal notices in local print newspapers.
Instead, the former University of Colorado law school dean name-checked Paul Starr and his book “The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications,” and noted the ways that public policy, like the Postal Service Act of 1792, has aided news media.
Public notice requirements are similar in that they enable the dissemination of news, he said, adding, “I share your caution in being quick to do anything to change it.”
While open to ideas, he said he is aware of the role public notices play and is concerned about the “fragility” of the newspaper business model. “So, we don’t want to be moving too quickly here,” he said.
Currently, Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this column, is supporting an independent effort called the Local News Policy Coalition to explore options for more public policy to support local journalism.
Asked generally if Weiser believes there are viable constitutionally appropriate approaches that Colorado might consider to help sustain local journalism, he said he would be “interested in looking at” whatever might wind up being proposed.
“I’m open to lots of creative ideas and different collaborations,” he said. (He did note that the budget is in dire straits, which creates plenty of challenges.)
Multiple times throughout the discussion, the attorney general urged journalists in Colorado to let him know about any incidents involving threats or harassment. His advice was to consult law enforcement as early as possible if it happens — and to let his office know if local police don’t appear to take it seriously.
Beyond threats and harassment, Weiser said he worries journalists will increasingly censor themselves as long as Republican Donald Trump is in the White House.
“We’ve never had a president of the United States as overtly hostile to the media as we have right now,” he said. “That creates a climate that we have a lot of fear and intimidation out there.”
Weiser referenced the phenomenon of anticipatory obedience and said what he is “most” afraid about is people sacrificing their First Amendment rights out of fear.
“So, I’m afraid that journalists will be afraid,” Weiser said. “And I’m afraid that journalists who are afraid will engage in self-censorship.”
On the transparency front, Weiser quoted former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who famously said sunlight is among the best disinfectants.
He also raised what he called a difference between “laws and norms,” particularly in an era with more people providing news and information of varying standards in the digital age.
“The challenge we have now is that it’s so easy to get information out there unfiltered, unmediated, without editors, without the responsible norms that you all grew up with and live with,” he said. “And so I think this is a really hard public policy problem.” Add the rapid rise of artificial intelligence into the mix, he said, and it gets even more challenging.
In Weiser’s fantasy version of the future, he said he hopes trusted brands with editors who fact-check information will become more valuable because people will crave trusted sources.
Asked what he thought about placing fees on large tech companies to fund local journalism, Weiser noted that he sued Google three times for what he called “being a monopolist and acting that way,” and said, “you can call me a critic of Big Tech.”
As for the idea of a potential independent nonprofit grant-making body for local news in Colorado, Weiser said he is open to more conversations about what the state could do. He suggested broadening something like that to include civic literacy and civic education.
In general, the attorney general who is running for governor said he doesn’t want government playing any role that puts a thumb on the scale and limits free reporting.
“When your money is coming from an area, there’s a risk that that system could be abused,” he said. “So, that would be the biggest concern I would look at.”
As attorney general, one way Weiser said he might have helped some of the newspapers in the state was when he worked to stop a merger between the Kroger and Albertsons grocery store chains.
King Soopers and Safeway might have both advertised against each other in print, he said, and if the deal went through there would only be one advertiser and less ad-war competition.
The state’s top law enforcement official asked the assembled press corps to let him know if anyone had any other concerns about consolidation and how it might affect their advertising sales.
Weiser’s main rival in the Democratic primary for governor is current U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, who five years ago sponsored a federal bill called the Future of Local News Commission Act.
“There are no silver bullets to any of these problems, but I know that we can’t just wait around for the situation to resolve itself,” Bennet told a group of Colorado journalists and publishers on a 2020 Zoom call. “If we do that, we’re going to wake up one day in an America without local news, and we can’t let that happen. So that’s why we wrote the bill.”
During Thursday’s roughly 45-minute discussion at the CPA convention, Weiser cast himself as a friend of the press.
“As someone who has been a longtime student of democratic governance and our constitution — and now someone who is actually in elected office — I have deep appreciation and respect for the needs of maintaining a local press, and I have concerns knowing that the business models are harder,” he said. “We depend on all of you reporting and informing the public, and I recognize that that is, right now, not easy to do.”
Corey Hutchins is manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. Reach him at CoreyHutchins@gmail.com.
“Beyond threats and harassment, Weiser said he worries journalists will increasingly censor themselves as long as Republican Donald Trump is in the White House.”
Boy, there’s an assertion without a lick of evidence. Journalists have been tard-raging about Trump for a decade now.