The media narrative on Republican legislative efforts. They want your money, not any accountability (part 3). Stay informed on gun bills -- and there's already one you should be speaking up on!
The media narrative on Republican legislative efforts.
The two links below (the Sun and CPR in that order) are both articles that fall into the broad territory of a "legislative session preview". If you read both, you will notice a common undercurrent.
It's hinted at by the following quote from the Sun article (quoted here with link intact).
"Republicans remain vastly outnumbered at the Capitol and thus cannot pass any legislation without Democratic approval. 'When you’re in the minority you don’t set the agenda,' said Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen, a Monument Republican. 'But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have our perspective.'”
The undercurrent here is the well-worn Colorado themes of "Republicans are on defense", "Republicans don't have any policy ideas of their own", "Republicans are obstructionists", depending on the outlet and reporter.
Yes. The Republicans are a minority party here and you cannot disregard that. The function of the minority party is to try and slow, stop, change the majority's priorities to the extent that they disagree with the majority's views.
There is another side to this, however, and it relates to the construction of the media narrative about the minority party because the media here don't simply relate things as they are, the media play into the creation of that reality.
It is, as media narratives are, the imposition of the media's paradigm about reality onto reality itself in their stories.
How many stories do you read (outside of here or other conservative-leaning outlets) about Republican bills? By my non-scientific count, it's not zero, but it's nowhere near parity with Democratic bills.
Take the CPR story below as an example.
I took an extended quote from the end of the article and attached it as screenshot 1.
CPR spends quite a bit of space on a couple of ideas by some (of course, Democratic) Representatives and their "ambitious" ideas.
They spent no time on the ideas (ambitious or otherwise) of Republicans. In case you think there aren't any yet, I would point you to an earlier newsletter where I put up a bill by Senator Byron Pelton to officially and finally exclude Ag buildings from the Colorado Energy Office's efficiency rules.
This is what I mean when I talk about the media imposing their narrative just as much as reporting on it: Republicans have no ideas to share because they're not reported on.
This is not how reporting coming out of our state capitol ought to be. I'm not calling for an article on every single bill no matter how farfetched (and there are farfetched efforts by both parties), but I am saying that conversations at the Capitol might look different if Republican bills got more air from our media than they do now.
I'm saying that people in this state who read the news might have a different view of what the majority party is doing if they had a better sense of the ideas that get shot down.
https://coloradosun.com/2025/01/07/2025-colorado-budget-cuts/
https://www.cpr.org/2025/01/06/colorado-legislature-2025-preview/
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Related:
Something for the truly devoted media scholar.
A little breezer article on crossmedia, multimedia, and transmedia (not media about transpeople, more media that gets shared across different platforms) is linked below. Good jumping off point for anyone who really enjoys media studies.
I challenge you to read this as an intro and then think about the ways that these different ways of media expression can be used in news and by activisits (something alluded to in the article and which I will do a little reading on myself).
https://serious-science.org/crossmedia-multimedia-and-transmedia-10276
They want your money, not any accountability (part 3).
Back in October, I wrote about a group of public and not-public news orgs getting a grant from CPB to do reporting from the state capitol (see the first link below for a refresher if you'd like).
The questions I had then remain today: will this coverage, taxpayer-funded coverage pardon, reflect the diversity of concerns and outlooks for all of Colorado, and if someone feels as though it doesn't, what can they do to seek redress?
Those questions bubbled up again with the CPR article I mentioned in the earlier post (linked again here for convenience, it's second below).
More so than the Sun article I paired it with earlier, CPR's article tilts to the left. By a simple check with a word counter, the Democrats in the article were given space for their quotes in about a 3 to 1 ratio to Republicans. That is, for approximately every one word of Republican quotes, there were 3 for the Democrats.
This state is blue and the Democrats hold the power here. Their policy desires are going to loom large, but disparities this big are not fair. They are not balanced.
As another example, look in the section headed "Two freshmen with ambitious ideas". Both freshmen here whose ideas are highlighted are Democrats, leading naturally to the the question of whether Republicans have any ideas, ambitious or otherwise.**
The Sun's coverage was a little closer to balance, but the Sun didn't take public money to produce their coverage. This being a free country, if they don't take my money, they are free to put the balance on their coverage as they see fit.
The standard for news produced using taxpayer money ought to be what's written into the requirements for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting: the coverage needs to be accurate, balanced, and fair.
CPR and KUNC miss the mark in my view.
Good luck, however, in trying to get any sort of reflection or change from the outlets that happily take your tax money.
Hell, good luck getting even the simplest of questions answered.
Screenshots 1 and 2 are emails I sent to the reporters about their article and then, upon getting no response, to them AND their editors respectively.
Note: I sent a similar email to CPR's Birkeland and her editors. I didn't take a screenshot because it was effectively the same as the second email above.
As with email 1, no response to my followup emails were forthcoming. A funny thing happened, however. Later that day I noticed what you see in screenshot 3.
The part I highlight was a late addition. I won't go so far as to say that what I emailed caused this to be added (I don't read minds), but this did give me confirmation of who was footing the bill.
As such, and absent any other answers to my questions, I felt an email to KUNC's Arnold, one of the few people who did actually offer to take some accountability for reporting under this grant, was appropriate. If the media preach about being the ones who hold those in power accountable for how they handle public money, surely they ought to face the same accountability for how THEY use public money.
I sent a list of concerns to him, essentially the same list as above, but as of this writing I have had no response. Not even to confirm receipt. At my last check, too, the article hadn't changed with regard to any of the issues I brought to him.
This was surprising and disappointing. I have been careful to note, more than once, how KUNC's reporters and Mr. Arnold have been respectful and open about their reporting. I appreciated his stepping up and engaging on the topic. CPR, the Sun, and the other grantee KRCC, have not once deigned to respond to questions (despite repeated requests).
Perhaps a case of everyone being friends and friendly until harder questions get asked?
The hypocrisy, the double standard, the glad acceptance of your money but not the accountability for how they use it do not speak well for these outlets. You do not earn trust this way.
**If you read the earlier post on the media narrative about Republicans not having any policy ideas of their own and wondered at the inspiration for that essay, wonder no more.
https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2024/10/31/gaines-left-of-center-news-collaborative-strikes-taxpayer-gold/
https://www.cpr.org/2025/01/06/colorado-legislature-2025-preview/
Stay informed on gun bills -- and there's already one you should be speaking up on!
I put up a brief "related" content earlier about a bill by Senator Tom Sullivan which would, in essence, ban the sale of any gun which has a detachable magazine (so not the sale of all guns, just MOST guns).
Since the legislative session has begun, we now have an actual bill to discuss. It's linked first below.
Along with the bill has come a group which I recommend you either join or follow (the second link below is their "call to action" on Sullivan's bill). Not only are they working against this particular gun grab by Sullivan, they are keeping an eye on gun bills at the Capitol.
And, to top that off, they're helping you advocate. They give you things you can discuss with others, with your legislator, and even buttons to click on which would populate your email with the addresses!**
Give the second link below a look, consider signing up for updates with the group, then contact your legislator, contact every Democrat state senator, and let them know how you feel.
I wrote my own email to every state senator (Republicans included) and have copied the text below in case you might find it useful in your own advocacy.
An open email to every Colorado State Senator and Governor Jared Polis about SB25-003
Hello to all,
My name is Cory Gaines.
I am a resident of Logan County, CO and I am writing you an open email about SB25-003 because, put simply, it is bad, uninformed policy.
Gun violence is a terrible thing. I don't know a single person, and I know plenty on both sides of the gun debate, that wants to see people harmed--with regard to gun violence, the difference between reasonable people comes down to a difference in approach, not goals.
Over the past 5 years, 4 of them with our state being in complete and total single party control, we have seen 20 gun control laws passed. Despite this, a Jan 1, 2025 article by CPR notes that murder and violent crime rates in Colorado are mostly flat compared to a decrease nationally. Whatever your views on gun control, this would seem to suggest that our current approach is not working. It would suggest that a focus on policy which mainly affects those who follow the law is not getting the job done.
As any painter could tell you, if a coat of paint you applied earlier is not adhering, you don't simply slap more on in the hopes that the later coats will somehow stick better. You fix the problem by going back to earlier work. Despite this, the approach of the past 5 years has been to apply more and more gun regulation, no checks for adverse and unintended consequences, no checks to see if it has done anything.
And, like clockwork, we now have another bill to add on to the pile. Another bill that places more regulations on the law-abiding. The difference now being that this bill would in essence ban the sale of almost every gun in Colorado. It then gifts the Attorney General's Office with discretion that no single office in this should have.
This bill is, despite the pretty semantic wordplay I've read by its sponsors, a gun ban. Plain and simple. It is an effort to, at the stroke of one law, remove the vast majority of firearms from Colorado's market.
It will certainly be challenged in court. It will likely lose. We taxpayers, roughly half who do not support this policy, will get to fund the lawsuit. Not you from your personal funds, certainly not Bloomberg. Taxpayers.
I urge you to spend your time and energy on the harder, less politically expedient, yet more fruitful work of policy that would make Colorado safer.
Cory
**If you can't get their email button to work, I recopied over the Excel file I posted earlier (third link below) which has the emails of all the senators and reps. If you want the senators, just click on that tab at bottom, copy and paste in all the addresses to your email.
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb25-003
https://wethesecondcolorado.com/the-most-extreme-gun-ban-in-the-nation-hits-colorado-state-house-a-quick-look-at-sb25-003/
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1archGIA9ZJvLUZi7raoDnDzaPdlXPrM2/edit?usp%3Dsharing%26ouid%3D105405937749106967542%26rtpof%3Dtrue%26sd%3Dtrue&sa=D&source=calendar&usd=2&usg=AOvVaw19PPmEr9AHIa8USLrRKe74
Great letter, Corey!
The paint metaphor is fitting!
Thanks for the useful tools you share.