Arizona House Leadership to Reporters: Show Us Your Papers

Arizona’s election fallout includes stringent new background checks.

A man is removed from the gallery of the Arizona House of Representatives after a contentious House Elections Committee hearing on the problems with Maricopa County's botched elections. The incident played a key role in new background checks for reporters.Screengrab of video courtesy of Stacey Champion

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The fallout from the botched March 22 election in Maricopa County, Arizona, has claimed its first victim: reporters’ access to the floor of the Arizona House of Representatives. On Thursday, the state’s House leadership imposed a ban on reporters who don’t submit to an extensive background check that includes criminal and civil histories, prior addresses, and even driving records. Should the background check reveal any convictions or irregularities, the reporter would not be permitted to enter the floor of the House.

According to Capitol Media Services‘ Howard Fischer, House leadership cited security concerns to explain the new procedures, which would also cover “any journalist who is even at the Capitol for a day to cover specific local issues.”

Fischer noted that the list of offenses that could disqualify a journalist from reporting at the House includes any felony within the past decade and any misdemeanor within the past five years. House majority publicist Stephanie Grisham also wanted the background checks to enable “House staffers to ask any individual or corporation, including but not limited to current and former employers, for any and all records and documents related to that person,” according to Fischer. That provision was later dropped.

The background checks came after two days of negotiations between the counsel for the House and lawyers representing several media organizations. The checks include some exemptions for reporters, but not if they were involved in crimes that include violence, assault, rape, extortion, bribery, eavesdropping, or trespassing. Fischer says it’s noteworthy that trespassing was included: A local reporter at the Arizona Capitol Times who exposed Arizona House Speaker David Gowan’s travels at state expense was once convicted of trespassing. (The reporter’s trespassing conviction was in relation to a bar fight, according to Fischer.) Gowan eventually agreed to refund the state more than $12,000.

Times publisher Ginger Lamb told Fischer: “This new protocol would have an adverse effect on a member of our reporting team that has written several stories that are critical of the speaker’s leadership. I would hope this is coincidence, but past experience leads me to believe otherwise.”

Rep. Gowan told Fischer that the checks did not single out reporters, but were focused on “non-employees,” following a March 28 incident that took place after a three-and-a-half-hour House Elections Committee hearing in which a man was pulled out of the House gallery by troopers from the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Several people who attended the hearing went up to the House gallery to watch the day’s proceedings, and the man, who bystanders claimed had done nothing wrong, was forcibly removed by troopers.

Fischer notes the gallery is open to the general public, and a memo written by the House Counsel said the “non-employees” who access the House floor are almost always law enforcement officials and reporters. Gowan acknowledged there hasn’t been a safety incident between House employees and reporters on the floor in at least 34 years.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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