Government ‘gag’ laws come in many forms

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press …”

We received an interesting email from one of our readers, Samson Waller of Southgate, informing us that sometimes our cherished Free Speech right isn’t always under the threat of terrorists armed with guns.
He was speaking, of course, in reference to the journalists slain in France last week by Muslim fanatics who were offended by cartoons printed by the satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo.”
Our right to Free Speech as well as our Freedom of the Press can also be threatened by government officials armed with nothing more than a pen, or worse, a verbal directive.
Case in point, said Waller, is what’s being referred to as gag laws imposed by Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota and Utah.
The laws in question make it a crime for the media and individuals — or anyone — to conduct undercover investigations into the meat industry.
For example, if one was to get hired in a meat processing plant and use that position to get footage of how animals are being mistreated or to show safety violations and publish that information, they could be charged with a crime.
If you even so much as take a photo of a meat processing plant from private property next door — even with permission of the landowner — you can also be charged.
The crime? Trespassing.
Think about that. If such a law were in place in the time of famed journalist Nellie Bly, who back in 1887 faked being insane in order to expose the horrid abuses inside New York’s Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island, she could have been thrown in jail.
So far, one person has been charged with what is being called an agricultural gag law, in Utah, but a judge threw that case out. Recently four others were arrested for filming the transportation of livestock.
Unfortunately, there are some in government who think they have the right to control information. They forget that government is of, by, and for the people.
They forget that our freedoms of speech and the press are the very foundation of our democracy. Heck, they are spelled out in the First Amendment of our Bill of Rights, such was the importance given to these freedoms.
Sometimes these freedoms can be chipped away in less noticeable ways, not dressed up as a law but by being an innocent-seeming “policy.” It could be all of a sudden where just one person controls government information, which when you think about it, is OUR — the public’s — information.
It could be that this policy is presented as a way to “control” information, which is another way of filtering what information is released. It could also be presented as a “professional” — isn’t that a fancy word? — way of dispensing public information.
It’s a slippery slope, folks, toward censorship.
Some in government even think the word government is outdated. Instead, it’s a “business.” Just what that means we don’t know but we’ve heard that one recently.
At times government can be anything but “professional” – whatever that’s supposed to mean. It’s a democracy, and dang it if democracies can be at times chaotic, passionate and noisy.
Some people feel a need to control public information for fear of “negativity,” but in the process end up smothering our rights and freedoms.
Sadly, there is a constant fight to protect our right to know, and worse, oftentimes the very people we elect to represent us are blind to this threat.
Waller said it best about these attacks on our freedoms:
“Assaults on press freedom need to be confronted wherever they rear their ugly heads, even when they assume the legitimacy of a state law.”
Or even when it is presented as just a mere “policy.”