Texas Department of Criminal Justice signage is displayed outside the Huntsville "Walls" Unit in Huntsville, Texas.
Jeremy Busby, a journalist incarcerated in Texas, has twice written for Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) about the retaliation he has endured for his journalism, including for a recent piece about a bad batch of drugs in prison leading to increases in violence and suicides.
He recently called into the Project Censored Show from prison to discuss his situation. FPF Advocacy Director Seth Stern joined the radio program to talk about the obstacles facing journalists seeking to cover prisons — both from the inside and the outside.
Before detailing his current circumstances, Busby recalled the first time he was reprimanded for his journalism.
“The warden called me in, and he pointed to the perimeter fence around the prison, and then he questioned me, he said, ‘Busby, do you know what that perimeter fence is for?’ And I said, ‘Of course, so inmates [don’t] escape … And he says, ‘You're wrong. That perimeter fence is to keep the public out of here, and the thing that you're doing is you're allowing the public to have access to here, and that's not a good thing. You can run into trouble for that.’”
After Busby’s telephone time on the show expired, Stern added that the discipline he and other journalists face in prison “might be a preview of how the rest of society looks if antispeech authoritarians get their way.”
He explained that government officials, from the Pentagon Papers case to the Julian Assange prosecution to he TikTok ban, frequently attempt to use “security” as some kind of magic word that nullifies the First Amendment and provides a free pass for censorship and retaliation. But behind prison gates, the bar is far lower than on the outside, and officials often succeed in limiting free speech based on flimsy pretexts.
Stern also discussed the problems that outside journalists face attempting to report on prisons, including the inability to set up media visits or communicate with inmates through nonmonitored channels, and a court system so rigged against inmates that newsworthy lawsuits get dismissed over technicalities before they can be adjudicated and reported on. It leaves “a really big hole in journalism’s overall coverage of one of the institutions of government that probably needs oversight the most.”
You can listen to the episode here. For more information about Busby and how to help, visit JoinJeremy.org or sign this petition.