Media

...MEDIA James K. Morris Behind Bars, Between Lines It's been almost a year and a half since California officials last burned an issue of the Vacavalley Star, but the editor's life is still not easy...

...One was an article criticizing a behavior modification program...

...A few copies were secreted away, but most were burned...

...But prison officials threaten to shut down the papers if the court does not give full discretion and control to the administrators...

...If they tell me I can't print something I just modify it...

...They are not going to allow me to tell them how dirty their backyard is...

...A young inmate, Dennis Lacy, is now the editor of a smaller version of the Sole-dad newspaper...

...Prison officials may fear communication among prisoners because it threatens their control, but to editor Vic Diaz it is a matter of speaking up in the face of everyday wrongs...

...Finally...

...Ultimately, he decided that if his critics wanted to take matters into their own hands "there isn't a damned thing I can do to stop them, except try to put some protection on my tail...

...If the courts decide something other than that, we won't have them [the papers] any more," says Philip Guthrie, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections...

...In March 1800 a New York lawyer in prison for debt published what was probably the first prison newspaper, the Forlorn Hope...

...State officials have felt free to tramp on what most of us assume are inviolable First Amendment rights because the Star is published by men who have already lost most other rights: They are the inmates of the California Medical Facility at Vacaville...

...Supreme Court has never directly ruled on a prison newspaper case...

...In fact, say Star writers, the warden had difficulty at first finding officers willing to carry out his search-and-destroy order...

...Inside the issue the banned material was replaced with notices such as "Staff has determined that this editorial is inappropriate for publication in the newspaper...

...The warden had been involved in previous censorship incidents when he was the superintendent of Soledad...

...Every prison paper in the state has had confrontations...

...I have a feeling they are going to try to shut us down," admits Diaz...

...One of the recent editors to get the boot was Terry Huston, an aggressive writer who between terms in prison had written for a number of magazines...

...a letter to the editor asked inmates to join the Prisoners' Union, and an editorial dealt with a banned employee organization...

...The California supreme court is expected to hand down a decision soon supporting the lower courts' contention that inmate-editors can publish what they like, as long as it doesn't interfere with prison security...

...It's hard," he says, "but it can be done...

...In addition, the Star was taken off a list of items paid for out of the inmates' own funds and put on a general budget, in an attempt to bolster the state's contention that the papers are house organs and should be under its complete control...

...In publishing tough reporting, Diaz has run other risks besides angering prison officials...

...Just because I am a convicted criminal should not be taken that I cannot be believed, not be credible...

...In Louisiana, for instance, two inmates, Wilbert Rideau and Billy Sinclair, produce a news-monthly whose uncompromising style rivals that of most magazines on the outside...

...Diaz, a thirty-three-year-old New Yorker serving time for first-degree murder, has been editing the Star since June 1979...

...After being told that he would have to kill a cartoon, three letters to the editor, and an editorial, Diaz printed censored in bold type across the front cover, along with quotes and pictures of Presidents Washington and Lincoln...

...many disputes have wound up in court...

...He accomplished that by corresponding with members of Congress, judges, lawyers, and journalists...

...But even producing a lackluster successor to the old News, Lacy still bumps heads with the administration over content...

...In the time that Diaz has edited the Star, prison officials have replaced the Soledad Star News editor at least four times...

...In 1976, Huston's predecessor, Artie Bailey, sought to publish two news stories covering talks given at the prison by state government officials...

...And that is: a number of fat-cat bureaucrats sitting in their oval offices making decisions to restrict my life...

...Among its original founders were the Younger brothers of the Jesse James Gang...

...Their paper is one of several inmate newspapers in California which, for the past five years, have been embroiled in a fight with corrections officials over what they should be allowed to publish...

...At the Star, Diaz hopes that the California supreme court will clearly establish the right of prisoners to wider press freedom than administrators have allowed...

...You know, what will he accept, what will he not accept...

...The next issue of the News was distributed, but only after a column trying to explain the absence of the May 7 issue was deleted, again by order of the warden...

...I looked at all they could do to me, all the way up to, you know, taking me out, setting me up to be killed or whatever," he says...

...It was a bright and articulate advocate of two causes: abolishing slavery and ending imprisonment for debt...

...Diaz, in the meantime, had begun a long series of appeals through administrative channels, and finally in the courts...

...Journalists who don't "modify" their reporting continue to come out on the losing end of prison power relations...

...Their most recent award was for excellent reporting of life on death row...

...Everything I have written the administration has never been able to disprove...

...He has been a prison-newspaper editor longer than anyone else now in the California system...

...But a story about corruption in the prison would never see the light of day "because the people who I am writing about are the ones who are going to make that decision...

...The freedom enjoyed by the Angolite, however, is the exception...

...This sort of journalism would not be tolerated in the future, they warned in official memos...

...I found myself writing for the censor," he says...

...Officials who screen articles take inordinate amounts of time, and a few months ago authorities decided to purge a number of subscribers from the paper's mailing list...

...I will go to Mary's house and back on the issue...

...been continuously published by the inmates of the Minnesota state prison for almost one hundred years...

...They come and get you after the rest of the institution is locked down, put you in a car, and ship you off to another joint...

...To prison authorities, such sentiments are best kept behind bars...

...Concerned about anything that might be viewed as sympathetic to an ongoing Prisoners' Union effort at Soledad, a prison censor nixed the articles...

...I came to a point where I said, 'You know what...

...The funny thing about it," says Diaz, "is most of the staff around here support the newspaper...

...And that's exactly what the state is trying to do," Star writer Joshua Hill told the Los Angeles Times...

...After Huston sued, the local court ordered that the objectionable items be published in a later edition...

...If I have accomplished anything in the last two and half years, it is that I have gotten the staff to read the newspaper," says Diaz with a measure of pride...

...At the very least, the attention he has had from outsiders has made prison officials a little less capricious when dealing with the Star...

...Hill later recounted the closing of the Star in a short story...

...Prison officials in California are typically reluctant to extend press freedom to inmates...

...In his editorial introducing himself to his readers a few years back, Diaz wrote, "I know there tends to be a world of difference between the way things are, and the way things can be...

...A 1974 ruling against prison mail censorship has been cited in upholding prisoners' First Amendment rights, but a 1977 ruling on inmates' right to make mass mailings left the decision in the hands of prison officials...

...Last December, for instance, Star editor Vic Diaz had to go to court to stop officials who were meddling with his subscription list...

...I'm tired of that...

...But another paper, the Prison Mirror, has James K. Morris is a free-lance writer in Washington, D.C., who is at work on a book about jailhouse journalism...

...Another article helped win the release of an inmate whose case had been forgotten by the Department of Corrections...

...My battles against censorship come from, really, a patriotic kind of root...

...While the current legal battle over prison journalism is relatively new, prison journalism is not...

...Huston, like Diaz, had challenged the prison administration's authority from the very start...

...Today's prison journalists are becoming more aggressive in their coverage...

...This time, however, when word reached the new warden, an order came down to collect the issues as they came off the press and carry them straight to the incinerator...

...All were either too negative or contained personal attacks on employees, the new warden said...

...Vietnam veteran Diaz views prison censorship much the same way he viewed the war—a bunch of bureaucrats restricting his life Diaz also did something almost every writer who lives with a censor does...

...His critics, he felt, would be more reluctant to do anything if he kept a high profile...

...Their censorship, he alleged, not only violates a basic right but makes for a dull paper—"something that is seldom read by convicts or anyone else...

...Things fell apart with the May 1980 issue...

...I see it as part of my job to define those differences...

...Given the general mood of the country right now, it seems to be the perfect time to move against the First Amendment rights of prisoners...

...What the hell am I doing?' At that point I stopped writing for anybody but myself...

...n late spring, a prestigious San Francisco law firm persuaded a Superior Court judge to restrain prison officials from halting publication of the Star...

...But before he came to that decision Diaz had another, more serious confrontation with the prison administration...

...The paper was closed...

...Rather than feed the fires of resentment and frustration, it provides a sounding board for prisoners' views, their gripes, and at the same time lends a sense of community...

...The two, who are serving life sentences for murder, have been given unprecedented leeway by the prison administration, and their paper boldly tackles subjects once thought to be off limits...

...Huston, nonetheless, asserted in an editorial on censorship that conditions for prison newspapers were improving, citing publication of the editorial itself as proof...

...One of the first things he did was tell Diaz that four items in the upcoming Christmas issue had to go...

...But because of a unique state statute that allows prisoners to retain all rights except those that jeopardize security, prisoners' expectations there are higher...

...Prison administrators will continue to censor prison newspapers at will, he said, to quell the feeling "that they are losing control...

...In the meantime, he keeps struggling to publish what he sees fit...

...At the end of 1980, a new warden was brought in following a series of killings and a wave of employee unrest...

...Only a few weeks ago, about 6,000 copies of the May 7 issues of the News were confiscated by prison officials when the word censored appeared in bold type in place of a death-penalty editorial barred by the warden...

...In Sacramento, top officials decided they wouldn't stand for Diaz's banner headlines...

...Forlorn Hope lasted only six months...

...Other notable prison journalists include Nathaniel Hawthorne's son Julian, who landed in jail for mail fraud in 1913, and various members of the radical Industrial Workers of the World, imprisoned in the early 1900s...

...This may sound cold, but I am in for murder—not for lying," he says, reshuffling another stack of papers on his desk...

...They have earned the praise of journalists around the country for the Angolite and have won a number of awards usually reserved for their mainstream colleagues...

...Diaz once again reached for his banner headline, censored...

...One month, for example, they ran a long piece on the nature and extent of prison rape...

...another article described two guards' alleged harassment of inmates...

...His success in making the Star an outstanding inmate newspaper is the result of his meticulous efforts to teach himself reporting and editing skills...

...But the improvements, he wrote, have come only by way of court rulings or legislative directives...

...Early on he received some not-so-friendly criticism from a number of inmates...

...The fate of such newspapers as the San Quentin News, where the entire staff was fired after publishing a front-page article on unsanitary conditions in the mess hall (complete with pictures of bird droppings), still hangs in limbo until the supreme court decides on the Soledad case...

...Working out of a small, one-room office, he and his staff of three have turned a twenty-six-year-old literary magazine into a tough news-monthly...

...That may sound exaggerated but in prison that's reality...

...And it's still not clear whether the state will allow newspapers like the Star to continue publishing much longer...

...Inmates who wish not to be identified say the discovery of counterfeiting materials was just an excuse to dismiss the News crew...

...Since then Diaz has been editing the paper each month, but the administration still gives him headaches...

...In fact, it was at the Soledad prison that the case now before the state supreme court originated...

...I have the same rights as you have, except those which would interfere with the security of the institution," he said as he stood by the door of his office...

...As he tells it, he was faced with a choice of giving in and striving for "the good-guy image on the line" or continuing to report things as he saw them...

...They take me seriously now, whereas I was just a nuisance to them before...

...It will not be printed for that reason...

...In fact, jailhouse newspa-pering is almost as old as jail itself...

...They've censored the word 'censored,' " he wrote...

...My record speaks for itself," he says...

...While he was waiting for a chance to tell the story of the Christmas burning to a local judge (who at this point was becoming more sympathetic to Diaz), two officers approached Diaz and ordered him to surrender his key to the office...

...I take my shots," says Diaz while fingering the pages of the controversial issue...

...Once I make the decision that it is appropriate for printing in the Vacavalley Star, I stand by the decision all the way," he says...

...In doing so, Diaz soon riled up the same officials who had approved his application for the editorship...

...In the summer of 1980, 5,500 printed copies of the News were shredded, although the warden claimed he didn't give the order...

...So far, his frequent court appearances have helped him avoid what he calls the "midnight express"—"one of the old techniques the administration uses," he explains...

...Regardless of the source of his funds, Diaz continues to hammer away at the administration...

...A free prison press is simply good management," says Huston...

...In Huston's desk, all they found was personalized stationery, but they cried foul anyway, saying it was printed on state prison presses...

...State officials removed him and the entire News staff, after finding counterfeiting materials during a search...

...The U.S...

...South of Vacaville, at the Soledad Correctional Facility, prison officials have been even less tolerant of free-speaking editors...

...It's more than a little dirt in a newspaper that scares officials, though...

...I am a Vietnam veteran and I view the Vietnam war pretty much the same way I view censorship...

...Gone are the previous dramatic headlines and lengthy articles, often critical of the administration...

...Prison officials in California's 22,000-in-mate system are far from won over by that argument...