Gag rules may seem like a brick wall to reporters, but there are ways to access government employees to glean information that is in the public interest. Laura Bischoff, a journalist at the Columbus Dispatch, CNN Senior Counsel Frank LoMonte and retired communications professor Carolyn Carlson of Kennesaw State University gave SPJ 2026 attendees a rundown on free speech and press rights of government employees and journalists.
Retired communications professor Carolyn Carlson discusses the importance of fighting gag rules to write more ethical and truthful stories. Photo by Skylar Paxton.
Most reporters have encountered gag rules in their reporting, said Carlson, who has surveyed journalists about them.
“This is a relatively recent phenomenon,” Carlson said. “It started earlier than the turn of the century, but it got way worse after the turn of the century.”
Bischoff has covered the Ohio state legislature for more than 20 years and says gag rules have been around for her entire career.
“They’re kind of like honeysuckle or kudzu in that they are invasive, pervasive, they hide things in darkness and they’re hard to fight,” she said. “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight them.”
On one of Bischoff’s investigations looking into prison confinement conditions in Ohio, a government department sent a system-wide email to all employees reminding them of the media policy and that they could be disciplined or terminated for speaking to the press, she said.
“That’s very chilling. You can explain to a [government worker] until you’re blue in the face that they have a constitutional right to talk to me, but they’re going to be really hesitant to do so because they could lose their jobs,” Bischoff said.
Frank Lomonte shares the legalities around gag rules and encourages journalists and newsrooms to fight corporations and entities in court to protect employees’ and reporters’ First Amendment rights. Photo by Skylar Paxton.
LoMonte said gag rules are present even when they’re not written down. Employees often believe they are under gag orders that don’t exist.
Journalists stepping in and educating employees and the public about gag rules is a great public service, LoMonte said. “A lot of times you find that it’s not really a regulation that has any force behind it at all,” he said.
LoMonte shared the story of Brittany Hailer, a journalist with the Marshall Project, who was investigating deaths in the Allegheny County Jail in Pennsylvania. Employees were forbidden from speaking to her because of their gag rules, he said. She sued to challenge the gag rules and was represented by Cornell Law School’s First Amendment Clinic.
“We actually didn’t end up getting a court ruling on this because almost immediately Allegheny County came to the bargaining table and said, ‘What do we need to do to make this suit go away?’” LoMonte said.
Bischoff urged reporters to think creatively about how they could work with their sources, including meeting in person to cultivate trust, going through union representatives and using anonymous emails to guard privacy. Sometimes a source doesn’t even have to be quoted, she said.
“People can be really helpful without ever being quoted by pointing you in the right direction to documents that will confirm the tip that you’re going after,” Bishoff said.
Featured photo by Skylar Paxton.