We begin this Tuesday edition of Ozarks at Large with our pal Andrew DeMillo. He is the editor in chief of the Arkansas Advocate.
Matthew Moore: Andrew, how is your summer going so far?
Andrew DeMillo: It's going pretty well, and especially now that the weather has cooled off a little bit.
Moore: No kidding. We've got two big stories here we want to spend some time talking about today that your team at the Arkansas Advocate has been covering. We're going to start with Arkansas libraries. Federal courts have heard oral arguments in the appeal of Arkansas's library obscenity law. Let's start our conversation there.
DeMillo: You know, last week the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — a three-judge panel from the Eighth Circuit — heard the case over Act 372. And that's the 2023 law that really was aimed at restricting access to certain library books and actually criminalized librarians for providing library materials that it deemed harmful to minors. As you'll remember, there was a federal judge in Arkansas who had struck this law down, and now it's before the Eighth Circuit. It'll be interesting to see how this turns out, because the three-judge panel — I believe there are two Trump appointees and a Bush appointee on it. The Eighth Circuit is one of the more conservative circuits in the country right now. And as you know, this comes at a time that the State Library Board is hearing comments on a rule that would be kind of a backdoor way of reinstating some of these restrictions by trying to tie state funding for libraries to restrictions on content. So we're watching this very closely right now, and this could have ramifications beyond Arkansas.
Moore: We're hearing the arguments, but in the opinion of the public, how are we seeing this conversation play out, whether it's with local libraries, whether it's with citizens here in Arkansas?
DeMillo: You're definitely hearing from libraries about this, about concerns about how overbroad this is, especially the criminal penalties for librarians. Part of the concern is that the "harmful to minors" standard is such a vague one. What is that going to include? How do you decide that standard? And it really could trip up some librarians. And librarians are among the parties challenging this right now. I think that's where you're seeing this right now. We're seeing public comments come in about the rules dealing with the State Library Board. The comments are coming in more in written comments than through hearings right now, but very similar concerns about that as well. They use a slightly different standard in their rules — I think it deals with, quote, "sexually explicit content." But even that could end up including pieces of literature that include things that people may consider explicit. And it's kind of in the eye of the beholder.
Moore: Well, moving from public libraries to public television. We heard earlier this month that Arkansas TV's board decided to accept the funding to put those dues towards PBS and make that available for another year here in Arkansas. There's funding that could be available for future years as well. And in your column that you wrote for Sunday, you say that this is good news for other civic institutions here in Arkansas.
DeMillo: Yeah. I think the point I was making in the column this weekend was this really shows kind of a path forward for other civic institutions, including libraries, including institutes of higher education, that have kind of become targeted along the same line of attack — where conservatives have gone after these institutions over content that they consider politically biased or too woke, or whatever term you want to use. And the PBS experience really showed what happens when you get this interesting coalition of very dedicated members of the public — in this case, viewers and donors of PBS — some high-powered donors. You have Waltons and Tysons and two very beloved bipartisan figures, Barbara Pryor and Gay White, kind of joining together and making just a very pragmatic argument. And the pragmatic argument was that when you're dealing with a state that is still struggling in a lot of areas when it comes to literacy rates, you're eliminating what is basically one of the best partners and one of the best tools for families and for teachers really helping students around the state. And the alternatives that they were pointing to — in terms of this material, the PBS programs would still be available online or through an app — for a state like Arkansas, where there are still a lot of parts of the state that struggle with high-speed internet access, even though we've had some advancements, that's really not an adequate remedy for a lot of these. I think it remains to be seen whether or not this same approach could work with some of these other entities we talk about, but at least it shows that there is some path forward when you get the right ingredients together and the right argument together. And this just really clicked together when it came to PBS.
Moore: I think one of the things, if we can find some common thread here between the two stories, is that public libraries, public television, civic institutions broadly here, are crossing political divides. There's true nonpartisanship here when we're looking at these sorts of institutions. And I think it goes to show why it's worth investing in these institutions — that regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, we can benefit from these services, whether it's a good local library or Big Bird.
DeMillo: Exactly. You know, this isn't something we're talking about in the abstract. We're talking about something that communities around Arkansas can point to very specific examples where libraries or where public television have really helped them or helped their children or helped their family members. And I think focusing on that argument is what really helped PBS in this instance.
Moore: My final question for you here, Andrew — if you're going on summer vacation, are you a beach guy or are you a museum guy?
DeMillo: Oh, I'm a museum guy. Much to my family's chagrin. They try to cap a time limit because they know I will try to read every single marker at the museum.
Moore: Well, if you find yourself at a museum this summer, make sure to say hi to Andrew DeMillo. He's the editor in chief of the Arkansas Advocate. You can find all of their work at ArkansasAdvocate.com. Thank you as always, Andrew.
DeMillo: Thank you.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
