It has been a week since Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee purged the alt-weekly from his official press notification list, but the governor (pictured) still has not provided a valid explanation for his decision. AAN sent a letter this morning on behalf of its member papers urging the governor to reverse his decision and put the Times back on the publicly financed list. The letter, signed by AAN President Kenneth Neill, reminds Huckabee that "as a public official," he is "legally forbidden from blackballing the paper based on its political content."
In a surprisingly vitriolic statement distributed by e-mail and posted on the Arkansas state Web site, Governor Mike Huckabee addresses complaints he has faced since he dropped Arkansas Times from his official media list. Huckabee claims that Editor Max Brantley "feels he is entitled to special treatment and should be given personal notice every time I conduct interviews with members of the press." A couple of political bloggers have differing opinions of the statement's significance for Huckabee's potential presidential candidacy: On The New Republic Online, Noam Scheiber writes that "You've really got to read the whole thing to appreciate how unhinged he sounds. The tone is not exactly what the political pros refer to as 'presidential.'" Meanwhile, Wonkette, tongue firmly planted in cheek, reaches the opposite conclusion: "So Mike Huckabee is an Arkansas governor with a bad temper and an adversarial relationship with certain media outlets. Perhaps he has a better shot at the presidency than we thought."
"We don't consider the Arkansas Times a news organization," explained Gov. Mike Huckabee's spokesperson when she was asked why the newspaper had been taken off the e-mail list used to disseminate public information to the media. On the Times' blog, Editor Max Brantley writes: "The governor has decided to punish us for our opinions by withholding a publicly financed service. We don't think this practice can stand legal scrutiny and we intend to review our options in that regard." Huckabee (pictured) is widely considered to be a candidate for the Republican nomination for the presidency.
