New England Muzzles – Media Nation

Accessibility, context, empathy: My students’ ideas to enhance the SPJ’s Code of Ethics; plus, media notes

Reporters taking notes — Photo (2017) by Portable Antiquities Scheme

This has become a perennial. Every semester, I ask students in my journalism ethics class to come up with a fifth principle that could be added to the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics. The code identifies four broad principles: Seek Truth and Report It; Minimize Harm; Act Independently; and Be Accountable. Each of them is fleshed out in some detail.

On Wednesday evening, I asked my current class, a small seminar comprising graduate students and advanced undergrads, to think of a fifth principle in three teams of three students apiece. Here’s what they came up with. I’ve done some minor editing in the interests of parallel construction, but otherwise this is entirely their work.

Ensure accessibility for your audience

Use plain language whenever possible.
Use multiple formats and multimedia as resources permit.
Reporters and sources should reflect the diversity of the community.
Neighborhoods and areas within the coverage area should be covered equitably.
A news organization’s website and social media should be ADA accessible.*️⃣

Place news coverage in context

Provide the full picture of all aspects of a story.
Give credit where it is due, especially to other news organizations.
Acknowledge relevant communities, perspectives and historical background.
Provide needed follow-up for the audience.

Balance empathy and professionalism

Show respect for sources and subjects of coverage.
Create a relationship that enables your source to trust your intentions.
Clarify to your source the scope of the article and how they might be affected after publication.
If you maintain relationships with sources, limit that to professional contacts rather than personal friendships.

*️⃣ There are, in fact, resources for ensuring that a website is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. As for social media, users are often encouraged to add text to images so that people with visual impairments can understand what an image represents. Hashtags should use upper- and lower-case in instances where confusion might result — for instance, screen-readers might trip up on the hashtag #firstamendment, so use #FirstAmendment instead.

Media notes

• Post journos petition Bezos. Since Jeff Bezos has clearly lost interest in The Washington Post, you have to wonder if he might disentangle himself from a property that he has clumsily described as a “complexifier” for him. The latest, according to NPR media reporter David Folkenflik, is that some 400 Post journalists have signed a letter asking that Bezos meet with them. The letter says in part: “We are deeply alarmed by recent leadership decisions that have led readers to question the integrity of this institution, broken with a tradition of transparency, and prompted some of our most distinguished colleagues to leave.”

• Muzzle Award follow-up. An order to the police chief in Burlington, Vermont, that he route all communications through the mayor’s office came at the instigation of Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George, reports Colin Flanders of Seven Days. I gave Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak a New England Muzzle Award for silencing Police Chief Jon Murad and, more seriously, for following up by scheduling a press availability but failing to invite all of the city’s news organizations. George was concerned about Murad’s public statements disparaging a notorious repeat offender, calling one statement “unnecessary and performative” and saying that he “really needs to knock it off.”

• Judge gets access to BoMag notes. Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone has received off-the-record notes from Boston magazine reporter Gretchen Voss’ July 2023 interview with murder suspect Karen Read, who will soon return to court following a mistrial last year, reports Travis Andersen in The Boston Globe. Judge Cannone will privately review the notes before ruling on whether to grant the prosecution’s request for access to Voss’ reporting materials. BoMag has fought that effort on freedom-of-the-press grounds; more background here.

Poynter’s deep dive into Baltimore’s setting Sun and the rise of the Banner; plus, media notes

Perhaps no city has benefited from a forceful response to the depredations of Alden Global Capital more than Baltimore. In 2021, the slash-and-burn hedge fund purchased Tribune Publishing’s nine major-market daily newspapers, including such storied titles as the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel and the Hartford Courant.

And The Baltimore Sun.

Now Angela Fu of Poynter Online has written a deep dive into the Baltimore media scene on what happened after Alden’s subsequent sale of the Sun a year ago to David Smith, the head of Sinclair Broadcast Group, infamous for imposing his right-wing views on newscasts at the company’s national empire of television stations (in New England, Sinclair has stations in Portland and Providence).

The other principal subject of Fu’s article is The Baltimore Banner, a digital nonprofit begun in 2022 by wealthy hotelier Stewart Bainum after his efforts to purchase the Sun — and then the entire Tribune chain — were spurned by Tribune’s board. Unlike most nonprofits, even some of the larger ones that Ellen Clegg and I included in our book, “What Works in Community News,” the Banner is what you might call a full-service news project, with a newsroom staff of about 80. (The Sun now employs just 56.) The Banner offers breaking news, sports, arts and culture in addition to the accountability journalism that is the hallmark of such projects. Fu writes:

While the Sun battles staff attrition, the Banner continues to grow. Since June, it has launched an “Education Hub” and expanded business coverage. The Banner is also working to extend its footprint across the state, hiring a number of regional reporters to cover counties that lack local news sources and starting region-specific newsletters. Ongoing experiments include live blogs, vertical video on the site’s homepage and comment sections on certain stories for subscribers.

Fu’s reporting is detailed and even-handed. At the Sun, she reports that there has been a wave of departures since the Smith takeover and widespread angst over his forcing the paper to run second-rate stories from the Baltimore television station that he owns. Smith has also ordered up critical reporting on the city council while funding a campaign to shrink the size of the council from 14 members to eight.

But though the Banner has been widely praised for its all-in approach to filling the gap created by the Sun’s decline, Fu writes that it has also come under criticism for taking an outmoded approach to reporting on law enforcement and for covering the city’s opioid crisis (in partnership with The New York Times) in a way that failed to acknowledge the work of grassroots organizations.

Also of note: The Banner’s board of directors includes Brian McGrory, chair of Boston University’s journalism program and a former editor of The Boston Globe. The city is also served by the Baltimore Beat, a nonprofit that covers the Black community.

What I found kind of odd about Fu’s story was the framing. She found that the Sun under Alden did not turn into the fiasco many had predicted, and that the real newsroom exodus didn’t begin until after Smith acquired it. She begins by describing the competition between the Banner and the Sun in covering the catastrophic accident that took out the Francis Scott Key Bridge last March, competition that she says was good for the city, and she wonders whether that brief moment is closing as Smith imposes his will.

Fu’s done the work, so I’m not disagreeing with any of this. Nor do I disagree with her observation that Alden may have held back on budget cuts at the Sun because it didn’t want to fall behind the Banner. But did anyone think it was going to last? In fact, it took Alden less than three years after it bought the Sun to turn around and sell it to a terrible owner who is transforming the paper into something of a right-wing laughingstock. Does it really matter if Alden destroyed the Sun by cutting it or by letting David Smith ruin it? Pick your poison.

The reality is that Baltimore is incredibly lucky to have one news source of record, and that source is now The Baltimore Banner. Bainum tells Fu that the Banner is eventually going to have to break even and survive on its own. Let’s hope the community gives it the support that it needs.

Media notes

• Muzzle follow-up. Last July, I gave a New England Muzzle Award to Waltham Community Access Corp., which claimed a rival had violated its copyright by grabbing clips of government meetings, even though WCAC receives guaranteed funding from licensing fees mandated by state law. That rival, a citizens journalism group known as Channel 781, sued, claiming that WCAC had acted in bad faith. Now a federal judge, Patti Saris, has refused to dismiss the suit and has instead asked the two sides to work out a settlement, Aubrey Hawkes reports in The Waltham Times.

• Going hybrid in New Hampshire. The Keene Sentinel of New Hampshire, one of New England’s feistier independent daily newspapers, is emulating many of its for-profit peers by starting a nonprofit arm that will accept donations to pay for certain types of public interest reporting. According to an announcement, the Local Journalism Fund aims to raise $75,000 in 2025, and will kick it off with a public event on Jan. 21 featuring two journalists from the Uvalde News Leader in Texas, which covered a horrific mass shooting at a local elementary school in 2022.

• The blizzard of Ozy. I never thought anyone could make me care about the decline and fall Ozy Media founder Carlos Watson and his associates. I have to say that I wasn’t even sure what it was, though I have since learned that it published meme-friendly news (and some serious stuff) in the same digital space as BuzzFeed, Mic and Upworthy. At my friend Emily Rooney’s urging, though, I listened to a three-part podcast on Watson’s rise, fall and his criminal trial hosted by the Columbia Journalism Review. It’s little more than a conversation between host Josh Hersh and my former “Beat the Press colleague Susie Banikarim, who covered the trial. That doesn’t sound too exciting, but — as Emily promised — it’s smart and riveting. Highly recommended.

In Vermont, a mayoral Muzzle for silencing the police and freezing out the press; plus, media notes

Church Street Marketplace in Burlington, Vt. Photo (cc) 2017 by Kenneth C. Zirkel.

It might be high-handed for a mayor to order her police chief to funnel all public statements through her office, but it isn’t necessarily such an outrage that it warrants a coveted New England Muzzle Award. But to compound that by announcing she would have a press availability to which not all local news organizations were invited — well, come on down and claim your prize, Emma Mulvaney-Stanak.

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Mulvaney-Stanak, the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and a leader in that state’s Progressive Party, signed an executive order last Wednesday ordering the Burlington Police Department to route all press releases through her office before distributing them to the public. “People need the basic facts of situations for the sake of public safety and nothing more than that,” the mayor was quoted as saying.

According to Colin Flanders, a reporter for the Burlington-based newspaper Seven Days, Mulvaney-Stanak had “raised concerns” with Police Chief Jon Murad “about the content of his department’s public statements in the past. Murad has used press releases in recent years to criticize the court system and a perceived lack of accountability for repeat offenders.”

Murad was silenced after a defense lawyer asked a judge to impose a gag order on the Burlington police in response to statements by the chief concerning a local man who’d had nearly 2,000 encounters with police. Murad had accused the man of “violent, incorrigible, antisocial behavior” — and some of Murad’s comments were repeated on the public radio program “On Point,” produced by WBUR in Boston and distributed nationwide. It’s hard to imagine that the mayor was pleased by that.

Meanwhile, Vermont First Amendment legend Michael Donoghue, writing in the Vermont Daily Chronicle for Vermont News First, reported on Friday that Mulvaney-Stanak would speak to the press at a media availability that afternoon — but that Vermont News First, which had been dogging the mayor over her acceptance of free donated meals, had not been invited. After Donoghue’s story was posted, he added an update reporting that Seven Days hadn’t been invited, either.

“She doesn’t answer her cellphone and actually has asked VNF to stop calling,” Donoghue wrote.

(Update: Donoghue later explained to me that VNF is his own journalism endeavor and that the Vermont Daily Chronicle is one of his clients.)

Well, if Seven Days and Vermont News First were left off the invitation list, who was invited? The city’s daily, the Burlington Free Press, didn’t report on the mayor’s muzzling of Chief Murad until today, and there are no quotes from her in the article. There’s nothing about any sort of press availability in the statewide news organization VTDigger, whose reporter Corey McDonald wrote about Mulvaney-Stanak’s silencing of Murad last Thursday, on the same day as Seven Days. Nor is there anything from Vermont Public Radio.

Chief Murad, who’s leaving his post this April, may or may not have been out of line in disparaging a notorious frequent flier in the criminal justice system. But holding law enforcement to account is difficult enough without the mayor stepping in and lowering the cone of silence.

For Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak to worsen that situation by creating the impression that she would exclude some news outlets from a media availability (it’s not clear whether that availability ever happened) goes beyond acceptable and pushes this story into the Muzzle Zone.

Media notes

• Donald Trump v. Nancy Barnes. Among the journalism organizations Donald Trump has targeted for libel suits is the Pulitzer Board, which awarded a Pulitzer Prize to The New York Times and The Washington Post in 2018 for their reporting on the 2016 Trump campaign’s entanglements with Russia. Trump is claiming the award was somehow libelous — and Ben Smith of Semafor reports that he’s is suing not just the board but individual members of that board, including, locally, Boston Globe executive editor Nancy Barnes.

• A liberal counterpart to The Free Press? Another star opinion journalist has fled the rapidly declining Washington Post. Jennifer Rubin, a conservative-turned-centrist-turned-liberal with a strong social media presence, is moving to Substack, where she’ll be the editor-in-chief of a new publication called The Contrarian — which, she tells CNN’s Brian Stelter, will “combat, with every fiber of our being, the authoritarian threat that we face.” Stelter’s report and Rubin’s introductory post suggest that The Contrarian could serve as a welcome liberal counterpart to the right-leaning Free Press, founded in 2021 by disgruntled New York Times opinion journalist Bari Weiss.

• New Jersey’s post-print future. This past fall I observed that Advance Local was closing its New Jersey print newspapers, the largest of which is The Star-Ledger of Newark, and doubling down on digital with its statewide NJ.com site. Now Marc Pfeiffer, a policy fellow at Rutgers University, has written a commentary for NJ Spotlight News arguing that print is not essential to maintaining a rich media ecosystem. “The future of New Jersey news is primarily digital — and that’s OK,” Pfeiffer writes. “What matters isn’t the delivery method but the quality and accessibility of local journalism. Our democracy depends on having informed citizens who know what’s happening in their State House, county seats, and town halls.”

• An update on that Colorado assault. A couple of weeks ago I noted that a television journalist in Grand Junction, Colorado, had allegedly been assaulted by a Trump supporter who followed his car to the journalist’s television station, tried to choke him, and shouted “This is Trump’s America now.” In his latest newsletter, Corey Hutchins writes that the 22-year-old journalist, Ja’Ronn Alex, is out on paid leave while Patrick Egan, the taxi driver who’s been charged, is out on bail, with his lawyer claiming that he suffers from mental health issues.

Plymouth’s town manager earns a Muzzle for giving a local news outlet the silent treatment

Plymouth, Mass. Photo (cc) 2008 by Raime.

When a community has been without a reliable source of local news for some time, government officials can become accustomed to operating without much scrutiny. And when a feisty startup arrives on the scene to report stories that had gone unreported, that can prove to be quite a shock to the powers that be.

Which is as good an explanation as any for what’s unfolding in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The venerable Old Colony Memorial had become virtually a ghost newspaper under the Gannett chain’s ownership, mainly publishing regional coverage from other Gannett papers. Then, in 2023, the Plymouth Independent, a nonprofit digital outlet, arrived on the scene.

The Independent is larger and more ambitious than many such projects; the editor and CEO is Mark Pothier, a former Globe journalist and, before that, editor of the Old Colony Memorial back when it was still covering local news. One of the Independent’s directors is Walter Robinson, a Plymouth resident who’s best known for leading the Globe’s Spotlight Team when it was exposing the clergy sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church.

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One Plymouth official who is taking particular umbrage at the increased scrutiny being brought by the Independent is the town manager, Derek Brindisi. According to a message to readers that Pothier published today, Brindisi has ordered “all appointed town officials to cease all communication with the PI.” The only exception is that town officials will be permitted to respond to public-records requests from the Independent, which, after all, they are required to do under state law.

For his unwarranted attempts to prevent the Independent from holding local government accountable, Brindisi is receiving a New England Muzzle Award. “In my decades as a journalist, Brindisi’s blanket edict is like nothing I have ever encountered,” writes Pothier, who also says:

Our job as journalists is to hold government officials accountable and to provide readers with the reliable information they need to foster a functioning democracy. In that respect, the relationship between governments and journalists is necessarily adversarial. We’re supposed to be skeptical of people in power.

Officials, paid public professionals, and Town Meeting members make decisions involving policies and spending that inevitably spark debate. They serve in the public’s interest. The Independent reports on them in the public’s interest.

Before the PI arrived, most Plymouth residents — including myself — had a hard time finding out what was going on in town. Perhaps naively, I figured officials would welcome the chance to present the town’s perspective on important issues. Some have — or did until this latest order to stop talking to us. Brindisi, however, has only reached out to express displeasure with our coverage.

Pothier goes into some detail about a couple of routine stories that upset Brindisi. One was written by Andrea Estes, a former investigative reporter for the Globe. (Estes’ career at the Globe came to a bad end for reasons that have never been adequately explained, but there is no question that she’s an experienced and accomplished journalist.) The other was written by Fred Thys, a former reporter for WBUR Radio in Boston and VTDigger, a leading investigative news outlet in Vermont.

Brindisi, for his part, childishly refers to the Independent as the “Plymouth Enquirer” and has complained about the Independent’s “distasteful reporting” and efforts to “humiliate town officials.”

This isn’t the first Muzzle to be awarded to Plymouth officials in recent months. Back in July, I gave one to select board member Kevin Canty for suggesting that an unnamed person was risking prison for recording the audio of a board meeting without informing those present. Canty was referring to Thys, who had made no effort to hide the fact that he was recording the meeting, which was also being live-streamed on YouTube.

Thys may have been in technical violation of the law, but seriously? “Canty and I later spoke about the incident,” Pothier writes. “We both agreed it could have been handled better, perhaps with a simple request that Thys announce he was recording.”

Pothier also credits Canty with working to mend the rift between Brindisi and the Independent, but that those efforts have come to naught.

A Muzzle Award to Mass. POST for spurning data needed to track police misconduct

Photo (cc) 2015 by Tom Woodward. Digitally edited to remove license plate number.

In 2020, Massachusetts took what was billed as a major step forward in holding police officers accountable. Following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the state created the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission “to improve policing and enhance public confidence in law enforcement by implementing a fair process for mandatory certification, discipline, and training for all peace officers in the Commonwealth.”

But according to an investigation by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, the POST Commission has not collected the employment data it needs to do its job. The story, by BINJ editorial director Chris Faraone and Sam Stecklow, an investigative journalist currently on a fellowship with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Invisible Institute of Chicago, found that Mass. POST and its director, Enrique Zuniga, made a series of decisions that experts say undermine the agency’s mission. Faraone and Stecklow write:

Despite passing regulations that instruct it otherwise, POST’s database does not include the full employment history of all of the officers that are going through the state’s recertification process — only for officers who have had discipline sustained against them. This prevents the press and public from analyzing data about what are often known as “wandering cops,” who transfer between departments after committing misconduct.

Employment history data are basic information that 27 other states around the country, including Vermont, have released to a national reporting project.

“It doesn’t make any sense that the previous employment of these officers wouldn’t be tracked and recorded if the ultimate goal was to prevent police misconduct from occurring,” Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition,” is quoted as saying. “We’re only getting half the story without this information.”

Over the course of 3,500 words, Faraone and Stecklow go into great detail in explaining what data are missing and what the implications might be. As for the POST Commission, it has earned a New England Muzzle Award for only partially lifting the veil of secrecy that protects police officers who’ve been accused of misconduct.

The story, by the way, is the product of a partnership between BINJ and the Invisible Institute that Faraone explains here. Their investigation is being published not just by BINJ’s HorizonMass affiliate but also by The Shoestring in Western Massachusetts, Luke O’Neil’s Welcome to Hell World newsletter, and about a half-dozen hyperlocal weeklies and other publications.

And lest we overlook the mutual backscratching opportunities here, I’ve interviewed BINJ and HorizonMass co-founder Jason Pramas on “What Works,” our podcast about the future of local news, while Faraone and Stecklow give a shoutout to the Muzzle Awards in their article.

Muzzle Award follow-up: MIT denounces the antisemitic Mapping Project

MIT campus. Photo (cc) 2009 by Wagner T. Cassimiro “Aranha”

The Mapping Project, an anti-Israel effort that singles out Jewish organizations, is back in the news — this time for publishing a flier, headlined “Welcome to MIT!,” listing “hundreds of institutions in the Boston area such as synagogues, museums, businesses, and police departments,” according to Janet Lorin of Bloomberg News.

MIT president Sally Kornbluth has denounced the Mapping Project for antisemitism, saying in a statement: “Like every other form of racial and religious prejudice and hate, antisemitism is totally unacceptable in our community. It cannot be justified, and it is antithetical to MIT’s values.” Lorin quotes from the flier: “Our goal in pursuing this collective mapping was to reveal the local entities and networks that enact devastation, so we can dismantle them.”

The Bloomberg article was republished by The Boston Globe, which so far does not appear to have covered the story itself. In case you don’t have a subscription to either Bloomberg or the Globe, here’s a free link to a story in The Jerusalem Post by Michael Starr.

In 2022, I gave the Mapping Project a New England Muzzle Award, then in its final year of being hosted by GBH News. Here is the item in full, published June 29, 2022:

The BDS Mapping Project

An anonymous group created a website to intimidate, harass and silence supporters of Israel.

U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss earlier this month called out a chilling example of intimidation and harassment: the Mapping Project, which identified Jewish and pro-Israel organizations on a map of Massachusetts. The map’s makers have remained anonymous, but the website has been promoted by members of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which seeks to name and shame supporters of Israel because of that country’s continued occupation of land claimed by the Palestinians.

The map, Auchincloss tweeted, is “tapping into millennia-old antisemitic tropes. To name names & keep lists, which has a sinister resonance to the targeting of Jews throughout history, is irresponsible. They need to take down the map and apologize.” Auchincloss is a Newton Democrat who is also Jewish.

The Muzzle goes to the BDS Mapping Project, whoever its members may be. Their foul activism is designed to frighten and silence supporters of Israel rather than allow for open discussion and debate.

The existence of the Mapping Project was reported by a website called Jewish Insider, which noted that its organizers explained their hateful project by writing: “Our goal in pursuing this collective mapping was to reveal the local entities and networks that enact devastation, so we can dismantle them.” The map includes colleges and universities, medical institutions, financial groups, police departments and numerous other agencies.

The action comes at a time of skyrocketing incidents of antisemitism, according to the Anti-Defamation League — which, naturally, occupies a prominent place on the map. In 2021, the ADL found that reports of assaults, harassment and vandalism against Jews were up 42% in New England compared to 34% nationally. Moreover, 108 of the 155 incidents in New England occurred in Massachusetts.

As ADL regional director Robert Trestan wrote in The Boston Globe:“Whatever one’s views on Israeli policy and actions — and we recognize that opinions vary widely — this should be an occasion for all to stand up against this kind of intimidation and targeting.”

A Muzzle to Waltham’s local access outlet for trying to silence citizen journalists

According to its “About” page, Waltham Community Access Corp., which operates two local access stations for the benefit of cable subscribers, “is funded by a percentage of the gross revenues from Comcast and RCN cable.” This is a typical arrangement, mandated by state law. And though WCAC describes itself as an “independent nonprofit corporation,” the revenues that access channels receive from cable providers are generally passed through to them by local government. What’s more, the cable providers themselves are licensed by each city and town.

In other words, local access outlets like WCAC may not be part of the government, but they certainly have a relationship with the government. Which is why the actions taken by WCAC last September, just before a city election, were especially pernicious. According to a lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court by a citizen journalism group known as Channel 781 News, WCAC filed a complaint with YouTube claiming copyright infringement because Channel 781 had made use of clips of government meetings. Again, as is typical of local access operations, WCAC carries some municipal meetings in full and then posts them online. According to a press release from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the suit on Channel 781’s behalf, WCAC violated Channel 781’s rights under the “fair use” exception to copyright law:

The Waltham Community Access Corp.’s misrepresentation of copyright claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) led YouTube to temporarily deactivate Channel 781, making its work disappear from the internet last September just five days before an important municipal election, the suit says.

“WCAC knew it had no right to stop people from using video recordings of public meetings, but asked YouTube to shut us down anyway,” Channel 781 cofounder Josh Kastorf said. “Democracy relies on an informed public, and there must be consequences for anyone who abuses the DMCA to silence journalists and cut off people’s access to government.”

WCAC’s actions — which have earned it a New England Muzzle Award — resulted in the temporary shutdown of Channel 781, according to a story from last September in The Justice, the student newspaper at Brandeis University. At that time, Justice reporter Lea Zaharoni wrote that WCAC did not respond to a request for comment. But Zaharoni found that the president of WCAC’s board also served as a city official, and observed that Channel 781 had reported critically on yet another organization that particular official was involved with.

Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub, who has published a comprehensive account of the lawsuit, found a statement posted by WCAC executive director Maria Sheehan that has since been taken down:

Our station is a private nonprofit that does not receive taxpayer funding. Over recent years, photographs from our news department, and video from the MAC channel, have been reproduced without our permission. We know this is a reality of the world we live in, but we put copyright disclaimers on our media for a reason. Some have used our content to score political points under the veil of anonymity. Others have used it to encourage residents to hate. This practice can damage reputations and spread misinformation and we do not want to be a part of that. So as we head into a contentious election season, I’m asking the public to respect people who work hard to create our original content. In the interest of transparency, we will entertain requests to reuse our content for free, but misuse is wrong, and it is illegal. Moving forward, the Waltham Channel will take whatever legal steps necessary to protect our content.

According to the EFF, “WCAC sent three copyright infringement notices to YouTube referencing 15 specific Channel 781 videos, leading YouTube to deactivate the account and render all of its content inaccessible. YouTube didn’t restore access to the videos until two months later, after a lengthy intervention by EFF.”

In its lawsuit, the EFF asks that the court issue an order to prevent WCAC from targeting Channel 781. Damages and attorney’s fees are being sought as well.

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The return of a Fourth of July tradition: The annual New England Muzzle Awards

A “disgruntled homophobic Middle School janitor.” The Massachusetts legislature, which has resolutely refused to strengthen our notoriously weak public records law. A Rhode Island city councilor who threw a critic out of a public meeting. A Malden charter school that refused to turn over public records on the patently absurd grounds that it’s not a public school.

These are just a few of the people and institutions that I’ve singled out over the past year as recipients of the New England Muzzle Awards, my annual Fourth of July round-up of transgressions against freedom of expression.

From 1998 to 2012, I wrote these up for the late, much lamented Boston Phoenix. Then, from 2013 to 2022, the Muzzles were hosted by GBH News. I decided to call it a wrap with the 25th-anniversary edition. But then I began to write up Muzzles as they came to my attention rather than saving them all for Independence Day. What follows are Muzzle Awards I’ve handed out since last June.

Kudos, as always, to my friends Harvey Silverglate, who conceived of this annual feature all these years ago, and Peter Kadzis, who edited all 25 editions. They were inspired by the Jefferson Muzzles, which no longer are awarded. Here in New England, though, their spirit lives on.

At a time when democracy itself is under threat, defending the First Amendment is more important than it’s ever been. The envelopes, please.

How our weak public records law is enabling a cover-up of school sports harassment (June 20, 2023)

The Mystic Valley Charter School, winner of a 2017 Muzzle, is back to its old tricks (Aug. 1, 2023)

A Muzzle Award goes to an R.I. city councilor who threw a critic out of the chambers (Aug. 7, 2023)

A NH publisher faces sentencing, while a small town in Mass. says no to drag (Dec. 13, 2023)

A Muzzle for the officers who removed a teenage journalist from a GOP event (Oct. 16, 2023)

In Marblehead and Waltham, teachers and officials seek to stifle public scrutiny (Nov. 8, 2023)

A Muzzle Award for the anonymous troll who reported ‘Gender Queer’ to the police (Dec. 21, 2023)

NH newspaper publisher fined $620 for running unlabeled political ads (Dec. 22, 2023)

AG Campbell boosts free speech for electeds, while an anti-trans shirt goes to court (Feb. 14, 2024)

A Muzzle to a CT police department that kept a murder probe under wraps (March 17, 2024)

Muzzle follow-up: North Brookfield will allow drag show at Pride event (March 20, 2024)

How our shameful public records law is affecting the Karen Read murder trial (April 29, 2024)

Great Barrington teacher sues town, school district and police over classroom search (May 17, 2024)

Plymouth official threatens reporter for recording a public, live-streamed meeting (June 20, 2024)

A Vermont state trooper, a middle finger — and, voilà, a New England Muzzle Award (July 1, 2024)

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A Vermont state trooper, a middle finger — and, voilà, a New England Muzzle Award

Retired Vermont State Police Sgt. Jay Wiggen

Among the most toxic behaviors that we often see in police officers is the tendency of some of them to overreact if they think they’re being disrespected. What they deserve, as public servants doing a difficult and dangerous job, is our cooperation. That doesn’t mean we have to like it.

Which brings us to Sgt. Jay Riggen, a Vermont state trooper. According to a recent account in The New York Times, in February 2018 Riggen pulled over a driver named Gregory Bombard — twice — for giving him the finger. Bombard denied it, but then did, in fact, flip off Riggen and cursed. Bombard was arrested and charged with two counts of disorderly conduct, charges that were later dismissed.

It got worse. The Times story, by Sara Ruberg continues:

According to the lawsuit, which was filed in 2021, the police circulated Mr. Bombard’s mug shot to local news outlets after his arrest and towed his car from where he had pulled over. Lawyers representing him said that last Christmas the state police issued another citation ordering him to be arraigned on a disorderly conduct charge in connection with the 2018 episode after the dashcam footage of his arrest was circulated and the police received public pushback.

Bombard last month received a $175,000 settlement. And Riggen, who retired at the end of May, is receiving a New England Muzzle Award.

An account by Juan Vega de Soto for the nonprofit news outlet VTDigger includes some other details. After pulling Bombard over, Riggen admitted that he was probably wrong in thinking that Bombard had flipped him the bird — not that it should have mattered. Vega de Soto writes:

In the ensuing conversation, Riggen acknowledged that he might have mistaken Bombard lighting a cigarette for the obscene hand gesture. FIRE [the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression] made the dash cam footage of the arrest public late last year.

In his response to Bombard’s lawsuit, Riggen admitted that he told Bombard: “Once I realized that you weren’t flipping me off, you’re free to go.”

As Bombard pulled out to leave, however, he cursed and displayed his middle finger, according to the civil complaint.

In the dash cam video, Riggen can be heard saying: “He called me an asshole and said ‘Fuck you.’ Flipped the bird. I’m gonna arrest him for disorderly conduct.”

Bombard sued with the help of the Vermont ACLU and FIRE. As FIRE senior attorney Jay Diaz put it in a statement: “We wouldn’t tolerate police officers who don’t understand traffic laws or parking laws. Well, the Constitution is the highest law in the land, and it doesn’t allow cops to abuse their power to punish protected speech.”

Now, admittedly, Bombard’s response to Riggen was not exactly the smartest thing he could have done. But it was protected by the First Amendment, and Riggen should have acted accordingly instead of punishing Bombard for failing to show him the respect his mistakenly thought he was entitled to.

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Plymouth official threatens reporter for recording a public, live-streamed meeting

On a Tuesday earlier this month, Fred Thys, a reporter for the Plymouth Independent, took a seat in the front row for that evening’s select board meeting and turned on his audio recorder — openly, and in plain view. You may remember Thys from his long career at WBUR Radio. Now he’s on staff at the Independent, one of the larger and better-funded nonprofit news startups that’s popped up in recent years.

Suddenly a member of the board interrupted the proceedings. As recounted by Independent editor and CEO Mark Pothier, that member, Kevin Canty, proceeded to inform those on hand that state law was being violated because an audio recording was being made without any advance notice being given. Although Canty did not call out Thys by name, Pothier wrote that Canty’s words appeared to be directed at the reporter as he told those in attendance:

There is a wiretapping statute that prohibits the discreet recording of even a public meeting by a private individual or member of the media that is punishable by up to five years in state prison, or two and a half years in jail. So if you are making any recording without making those in the room aware of that, I would encourage you to reconsider that particular stance.

Now, Canty was not 100% wrong, though he was more wrong than right, and his warning was certainly at odds with the interests of governmental transparency. Thus he has richly earned a New England Muzzle Award for attempting to interfere with a journalist who was simply trying to do his job.

Let’s count up the absurdities.

The proceedings were already being live-streamed on YouTube by the local public access operation and would be posted for posterity within a few days of the meeting.
Canty immediately reached for the state wiretapping law, which was sometimes used to stop citizen activists from recording police officers while performing their duties — but which, as Pothier observes, a federal appeals court ruled was a violation of the First Amendment.
If it bothered Canty so much, why he didn’t just take Thys aside at a break in the meeting and ask him to announce that he was recording at future meetings?

Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition, told the Independent that “you have a meeting that’s being live streamed and recorded. Certainly, there’s no expectation of privacy here. One really needs to question what the intent was to make that threat of jail time. Was it to intimidate the journalist?”

But Canty, a lawyer, did have a thin reed to grasp onto. Under state law, anyone who plans to make an audio recording of an interview or a gathering needs to inform those present. At one time we all thought that the explicit permission of the party or parties being recorded was necessary, but that was clarified by the state’s Supreme Judicial Court in 2021. Still, you do have to say something.

When I asked Silverman about that, he replied by email that Thys should have notified the chair, although he was within his rights to record whether the chair liked it or not. “That said, I’m not aware of any penalty, if there is one, for not making the announcement,” Silverman said. “I’m also skeptical about whether this requirement would even apply in cases where the meeting is already being recorded by the town and live-streamed.”

Two other points of note.

First, when Canty made his public announcement, he said he was speaking on behalf of the town manager, Derek Brindisi, but Brindisi later suggested that Canty was exaggerating. Brindisi told Pothier that he let a couple of the select board members know that someone was recording and suggested they make an announcement. “So it was nothing other than that … You have to speak to Kevin about why he chose the words that he chose,” Brindisi said.

Canty, for his part, said his remarks were not grounded in any animus toward Thys or the Independent. “It’s just my general practice as a rule as a criminal defense attorney to discourage people from committing felonies,” he said.

Second, Thys said he’s been recording public meetings for years without making an announcement, and he had never run into trouble before. As it turns out, the meeting was covering was unusually fraught — the select board was removing a founding member of the Community Preservation Committee who had chaired it since it was established in 2002. If you can’t stand the heat, etc.

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