Guild members support improving journalistic access to jails and prisons

Media Guild of the West members, at an April 4, 2023, quarterly membership meeting, voted 100% to 0% to pass the following resolution on journalistic access to jails and prisons.

Whereas, since 2020, Media Guild of the West members have supported advocacy for open-records access and First Amendment issues that affect the work of journalists and serve the public interests of transparency and accountability;

Whereas, many Guild members and other journalists regularly report on jails and prisons as part of their coverage of the criminal justice system;

Whereas, journalists in California had much greater access to cover conditions inside of state prisons, until that access was curtailed in the mid-1990s;

Whereas, the state Legislature has since passed bills nine times seeking to restore journalistic access, only to see those bills vetoed;

Whereas, SB 254 (Skinner) once again seeks to restore transparency to California’s prisons, as well as to city and county jails;

Therefore, be it resolved:

The members of the Media Guild of the West, TNG-CWA Local 39213, support efforts by their local union to engage in advocacy for SB 254 and other similar transparency measures that would allow journalists to more adequately cover the penal system on behalf of the public. 

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Media Guild of the West, The NewsGuild-CWA Local 39213, was founded in 2019 and represents unionized journalists and media workers at the Los Angeles Times, Arizona Republic, Phoenix New Times, Desert Sun, Austin American-Statesman, Dallas Morning News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and Southern California News Group.