While Southeast Missouri State University gears up for Wednesday's big healthcare debate showdown between former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former DNC chair Howard Dean, some media outlets in the state are picking up on a different angle to this story. At least one well-known Missouri journalist is blasting the university and the speakers about the restrictions on audio and video recording at the "Health Care Today" debate.

The university recently sent out a letter to media outlets, including the Southeast Missourian, saying "Video and audio recording of the debate is prohibited except as specified in the contracts with both speakers."

That means the Southeast Missourian, and all other media outlets except for KFVS, are prohibited from recording.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch picked up on the story on its Political Fix blog, but author Jake Wagman stays away from editorializing, preferring instead to just present the facts concerning the recording restrictions.

Not so for Bob Priddy, respected radio journalist and director of the Missourinet news service. Priddy straight out blasts Dean and Gingrich for making sure in their contracts that what they say can't be recorded and distributed without first being edited.

From Priddy: "The Missourinet doesn't think much of public figures who go to taxpayer-supported institutions to speak on issues of public importance who decide they can limit, control, and censor what the public gets to hear of their presentation."

He goes on to say Gingrich and Dean are actually afraid of recordings, because they have a script they must follow, and it's the same one they use at all such speaking engagements, so letting it be recorded would render future speaking engagements useless. Priddy goes on to say "Public figures appearing in public places discussing public issues have no business limiting what the public can hear."

Click here to read Priddy's take.

I posed a couple of questions to Southeast Missouri State University news bureau director Ann Hayes: 1) Is the limitation on audio and video recording tantamount to censorship? and 2) What particular sort of recording is allowed in the contracts?

Hayes said the university has an obligation to honor the contracts with the speakers, and the institution is simply acting as a host for the event.

"The speakers' agencies outline guidelines for media access, and the University abides by those," she wrote in response to my questions.

The university and KFVS have the right, under contracts, to record the event. The university will provide edited clips of the event for all media to use. Hayes wrote "So, in regard to your question concerning censorship, we feel, in actuality, we have taken an extra step to provide media access to the event that otherwise might not have been possible."

She also provided contact information for both Gingrich's and Dean's agents, but I've not received a reply to questions emailed to each about specifics of the contracts, and why such prohibitions are part of the speakers' respective contracts.

We'll have reporters and a photographer at the event, and we will attempt to post clips of the event provided by the university. However, keep in mind those clips will be selected by an entity that isn't the Southeast Missourian, so we have no control over their contents. In other words, you will see what the university and the speakers want you to see (or what they find to be the most relevant moments), not what we think is important. That's not to say that we might not agree with the university as to what were the important parts of the debate. We won't know that until Wednesday.

So if you want the unedited version, you'll have to go to the event. At $8 per ticket, the cost isn't really prohibitive for most people. The event starts at 7:30 p.m. at the Show Me Center.