{"id":46779,"date":"2021-05-14T13:15:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-14T19:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-house-republicans-distribute-list-of-friendly-and-not-friendly-news-outlets\/"},"modified":"2021-05-14T19:15:00","modified_gmt":"2021-05-14T19:15:00","slug":"colorado-house-republicans-distribute-list-of-friendly-and-not-friendly-news-outlets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-house-republicans-distribute-list-of-friendly-and-not-friendly-news-outlets\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado House Republicans distribute list of \u2018friendly\u2019 and \u2018not friendly\u2019 news outlets"},"content":{"rendered":"

A list of media outlets handed out by House Republican leadership to its members. The list included a column denoting whether an outlet is \"friendly\" or \"not friendly.\"
A list of media outlets handed out by House Republican leadership to its members. The list included a column denoting whether an outlet is \"friendly\" or \"not friendly.\"<\/span>Jesse Paul\/The Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, leadership in the Colorado House Republican caucus handed out a list of media outlets to their members. But instead of just titles, mediums, phone numbers and email addresses, there was an untitled column with one of two descriptors: \u201cfriendly\u201d and \u201cnot friendly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

The House Republican list of media outlets:<\/h4>\n

The Denver Post \u2013 Not friendlyThe Gazette \u2013 Friendly9News \u2013 Not friendlyCBS4 \u2013 FriendlyColorado Politics \u2013 FriendlyColorado Public Radio \u2013 Not friendlyThe Colorado Sun \u2013 Not friendlyDenver Business Journal \u2013 FriendlyGrand Junction Sentinel \u2013 FriendlyDenver7 \u2013 FriendlyKDVR Fox 31 \u2013 FriendlyColorado Newsline \u2013 Not friendlyAxios Denver \u2013 Not friendly<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Six outlets, including The Colorado Sun, The Denver Post<\/em>, Colorado Public Radio, Axios Denver, Colorado Newsline and 9News, were listed as unfriendly, according to a copy of the list obtained by The Sun\u2019s politics newsletter, The Unaffiliated.<\/p>\n

Seven others, including The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel<\/em> and television station KDVR-TV, were listed as friendly.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun checked with the three other caucuses in the Legislature and their respective spokespeople. All said they don\u2019t have a similar list denoting whether a media outlet is friendly. There may be mental notes about which reporters are better to work with than others, but no written list, Capitol veterans say.<\/p>\n

House Minority Leader Hugh McKean, R-Loveland, defended the list, saying it was created at the request of a member who wanted to know how to best navigate the Capitol media landscape.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just wanted to make sure that as they\u2019re pushing stories out that they know what to expect out of those different media organizations,\u201d McKean said. \u201cIf I have a story that I want to push out that deals with Republican principles, with free market, with fiscal conservatism \u2013 with kind of a libertarian mentality \u2013 I probably don\u2019t push that story to The Atlantic<\/em> monthly. I probably push it to The Weekly Standard<\/em>. Those are just different markets \u2013 and different takes on things.\u201d<\/p>\n

McKean said the list was \u201cabsolutely not\u201d meant to be a \u201cblacklist\u201d of outlets. Nor is it intended to encourage lawmakers to avoid talking to certain reporters. He pointed out that the list contained only media outlet titles and not the names of specific reporters.<\/p>\n

Every outlet covering the Capitol full time has a desk in the building and has only one or two dedicated reporters. Because of that, outlets and their reporters are often conflated.<\/p>\n

The list comes amid the backdrop of debate at the Capitol this year about a media literacy bill aimed at ensuring Colorado students know how to identify trustworthy news outlets and disregard false information.<\/p>\n

House Republicans fought hard against the media literacy measure, worried that left-leaning sources would be prioritized. That\u2019s despite the legislation having GOP support in the Senate. The measure, House Bill 1103, is awaiting Gov. Jared Polis\u2019 signature.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there is this symbiotic relationship between the press and the legislators,\u201d McKean said. \u201cWe can\u2019t do what we do without you guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Colorado issues. To learn more, go to coloradosun.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Minority leader defends list as way to navigate Capitol media landscape<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[394,14,233,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-46779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado-legislature","tag-colorado-state-house-of-representatives","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46779"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=46779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}