Punishing Dissidents; Deaths in Custody: Session on Controls on Reporting

On Thursday, the New England Chapter of SPJ hosted a zoom session on, “Fighting Gag Rules on Government Employees.”

In particular, this is about what may be the first suit by a journalist against this kind of censorship in a public agency.

Here’s the YouTube link.

--Frank LoMonte, First Amendment attorney who is now counsel at CNN, has previously said these rules are unconstitutional and courts have agreed with that. He said, “What kind of government would punish people for just for being dissidents, right? What kind of government would punish people for being critics of the official regime’s policy? And the answer is ours.”

--Brittany Hailer, the Pennsylvania investigative journalist who has filed the suit against the Allegheny County Jail, said, “Something that we talk about a lot in the death-in-custody stuff that we're doing is: had George Floyd crossed the threshold of his jail we never would have known what would happen. It would have entered a black box of information.”

--Kathryn Foxhall said even now as we are still trying to figure out what happened during the pandemic and the dangers of doing or not doing research on viruses, the entire 70,000 person staff of HHS is trained not to speak to the reporters without notifying the authorities. Most of the time they can’t speak at all. “This is a horrific crime against humanity. It’s dictatorial control over what people can hear.” She also said, “It’s the press’ fault.”

SPJ press release on the suit, filed in August, with resources:

https://www.spj.org/news.asp?ref=2953