BOWLING GREEN DAILY NEWS

State legislators in Frankfort really need to be careful when it comes to suppressing the media’s ability to report on our elected officials as well as the right of their constituents to be informed.

In the past few years we have watched some legislators, mostly Republicans, go after the media like a pack of wolves. They’ve taken public notices out of newspapers and in doing so have caused several weekly newspapers to close their doors in our state. As this editorial is being written, they’re trying to allow notices that are currently required to be published in newspapers to be shifted to a government website where people may have a harder time finding them, especially the 12% of Kentuckians who have no internet service.

We have said it before, and we will say it again, that we believe one of the main reasons that these legislators are targeting newspapers is because of their disdain for the state’s two largest newspapers, the Louisville Courier-Journal and Lexington Herald Leader. These are admittedly left-leaning newspapers that aren’t always friendly to Republicans in Frankfort, but many newspapers across the state have differing political views yet we are being treated like we speak with a single voice. At the end of the day, these politicians who are trying to make it harder for newspapers and the public to get public information need to have a lot thicker skin than they currently do.

This editorial is not simply about newspapers, because the public’s interest is at stake here. Our job is simply to inform the public and act as a watchdog for how well elected officials are performing and how wisely our tax dollars are being spent.