From subversive spaces, prison journalists build muscles of resistance and perhaps a sort of tolerance against the repressive nature of opposing forces.
When billionaire owners of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong leaned on their papers’ editorial staff to pull endorsements of Kamala Harris last November, it was a low point for journalistic integrity. It appeared that business interests carried more clout than foundational principles of journalism, such as free speech and freedom of the press. Two months into a new administration, we’re finding out that our new president’s intimidation and attacks on the press are more sinister than surly.
Businesses that comply with Trump’s vision and political goals survive; those who refuse to be intimidated or extorted are prey to his fury. The list of targets and victims includes Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who had suspended Trump from Facebook after the January 6 insurrection, now bowing to Trump with a $25 million dowry; ABC, owned by Disney, settled a flimsy Trump lawsuit over George Stephanopoulos reporting Trump had been found liable for rape (rather than sexual abuse); and CBS is reportedly ready to settle a similarly weak suit against allegations that 60 Minutes unfairly edited out unflattering remarks made by Kamala Harris during an interview. CBS is owned by Paramount, and after incoming Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr alerted them that a merger bid they’re negotiating might be in jeopardy, settlement talks ensued.
Other media, journalistic, and free speech entities and advocates are also under attack. New York Times columnist David Brooks said that Trump sees the media as a threat to his power and attack is his go-to defense strategy. This includes PBS, the Associated Press, The Voice of America, and Columbia University — the preeminent journalism school in America, from which student-activist Mahmoud Khalil was arrested and faces deportation for protesting Israeli bombardment on Palestine. Now, Columbia has agreed to Trump’s terms surrounding student protest, essentially silencing free speech at a major journalism school teaching free speech, in order to attempt to save $400 million in threatened federal funding.
As a prison journalist, the types of intimidation, extortion, and oppression described above are nothing new within the carceral environment. Prisoner reporters are battle-tested in the arena of attempts to restrict free speech and censorship. Personally, I have had the opportunity to experience intimidation, threats, bullying, censorship, and oppression from a very intimate perspective. I have also encountered incarcerated individuals on the verge of giving up who have found meaning, purpose, and a reason to not give up by discovering their voice in writing and reporting. And I have met people who support prisoner reporting and those in the publishing world who have embraced my obsession with writing and reporting, allowing moments of hope in an otherwise hopeless place.
One of those individuals is Emily Nonko of Empowerment Avenue, a staunch advocate for prisoner reporting. She offered this: “Prisons and policing are the essential structures that have made our country’s decline into authoritarianism so rapid. Those who are caged and confined within the nation’s prisons already understand the oppressive forces of the state and utter lack of accountability or following ‘laws.’ The rules and laws to which those in power adhere are designed for their benefit. They can do whatever they want with them.”
From subversive spaces, prison journalists build muscles of resistance and perhaps a sort of tolerance against the repressive nature of opposing forces. The rise of incarceration in the US amplifies the need for an aggressive defense of free speech in prisons. The vast number of Americans incarcerated — 2.2 million, with the poor and people of color suffering disproportionate rates of imprisonment — means prison censorship affects marginalized groups the most, reducing their ability to take part in the public forum. This results in the most impacted by mass incarceration having the least say in the discussion.
Now, Nonko says, “The outside public is beginning to get a taste of autocratic rule — the chipping away of democracy a right at a time. Beginning with the first right, the First Amendment, free speech, freedom of the press. Absolutely none of it can happen without the force of our current carceral system.”
Within this carceral environment, I have founded or participated in the founding of three prison newspapers — The Corcoran Sun, a cell-published paper from the Substance Abuse Training Facility — SATF Corcoran (for 15 years); the Mule Creek Post, a prisoner-produced newspaper that is currently digitally published on the tablets available to prisoners throughout the country (established 2018); and Vanguard Incarcerated Press (VIP), an abolitionist paper of prisoner articles (beginning 2023), directed by Dr. Joan Parkin and affiliated with and supported by Davis Vanguard’s CEO David Greenwald. I also serve on the inmate advisory board of Wall City magazine, a Pollen Initiative publication.
Kate McQueen, Pollen Initiative’s editorial director, writes in “Literary Journalism and the American Prison Press” that “the prison press occupies a small but consequential place in the field of American prison literature.”
She quotes Arnulfo Garcia, former editor-in-chief of California’s San Quentin News, on taking “fact-driven storytelling across prison walls [being] the only way to begin fruitful and honest conversations” with the greater public.
From within this autocratic space, a world separated from the world, we prison journalists strive to give voice to the dispossessed, disenfranchised, and most marginalized populations. McQueen highlights multiple factors contributing to writing productivity in places of extreme repression when referencing Angela Davis, who “points out that all forms of prison writing open a ‘subversive space’ in which incarcerated writers nurture creativity, hone agency, and develop insider knowledge about the structures that suppress responsible for their disenfranchisement.”
Free expression rationales featured in U.S. Supreme Court law, such as “the marketplace of ideas” theory, support the claim that prison speech is an important function of the First Amendment. It contends that the marketplace of ideas does not operate as it should when the government prevents prisoners from joining in public discourse, particularly in matters relating to criminal justice and mass incarceration. Excluding prisoners’ voices from the conversation warps and constricts public discourse on issues that affect marginalized populations the most.
“The Press in Prison: A Practical Abolitionist Guidebook”, edited by Emily Nonko, states: “Freedom of the press is a hallmark of a democracy in which the powerful are held to account. As journalists, our work implies a set of shared values. Chief among those for journalists who call themselves ‘watchdogs’ is a guarantee to shed light on systemic injustices. The stymied flow of information to and from prisons facilitates abuses of power and the degradation of the very values we share. Continuing to ignore, sequester, and silence victims of the country’s largest violator of rights is antithetical to our duty as responsible custodians of democracy.”
Without participation and a thorough listening of the voices from within the walls of this nation’s penitentiaries, the brutality and inequity of mass incarceration will persist. Most prisoners eventually get out. Whether we have to stand up to tyranny and attempt to dismantle and silence journalistic voices from the inside or the out, we’ll continue a determined defense of its principles and those of democracy.
Nobel Prize Laureate Maria Ressa, comparing Trump to her homeland Philippines’ former president-dictator Rodrigo Duterte, says that the first thing a leader who craves total power does is silence the press and neutralize the justice system.
She told Amna Nawaz during a PBS interview, “Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without these there’s no shared reality. The role of journalism is to hold truth to power. If you lose sight of that, you lose journalism. If you lose journalism, you lose democracy.”
Ressa added: “It isn’t just the journalists, because journalists are the front lines in this, but the question is to every single citizen in America.” To them, she posed a question in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech that she reiterated on PBS — “What are you willing to sacrifice for truth?”
Perhaps it will be left to us, the least of us, to be the ones who hold the line. As prisoner journalists, we know what those in power are willing to do to silence the truth, and in spite of oppression, censorship, and threats, there are still those willing to step up and fight the good fight.
Will prison journalism save democracy? Maybe not. But if grit and determination and raw stubbornness have anything to do with it, maybe we can help.
Originally published by Objective Journalism
D. “Razor” Babb is the founding editor-in-chief of The Mule Creek Post, a newspaper published out of Mule Creek State Prison in California, where he is incarcerated. He is also a 2008-09 winner of the PEN Prison Writing Award in the essay category and the author of numerous books, including “Icicle Bill,” “Goodbye Natalie” and “Last Lockdown.”
