This month, World Press Freedom Day acknowledges and celebrates journalists from all walks of life. This is the time to support journalists too often singled out for vengeance because they exercise their right of press freedom. Many have been killed on their quest to uncover truth.

Equally important, too often, journalists behind bars are disregarded. World Press Freedom Day allows us to show up in the public arena. As reporters considered working behind enemy lines, we are the unsung purveyors of fact — disappeared in the era of mass incarceration. That is changing, though, especially as the United Nations recognizes and reminds governments of their need to respect press freedom.

After 35 years, the American Penal Press Contest has returned. The idea to revive the contest is an outgrowth of what has happened at San Quentin News. The non-profit Pollen Initiative (formerly Friends of San Quentin News) in conjunction with Southern Illinois University Carbondale has resurrected the contest.

The American Penal Press Contest, coupled with World Press Freedom Day, is a time to acknowledge the hard work done by all professional journalists who are incarcerated, and supported by prison officials nationwide.

Journalism at San Quentin, and in other correctional institutions, would not be possible without the aid and support from the dozens of professional journalists, editors, photographers, design and layout experts, outside business advisors, volunteers, college students, and generous grant funders. Over the years, all have unselfishly given their time and resources to men and women considered undeserving.

During the contest’s first iteration, it was considered the “Pulitzer Prize behind bars.” It was established in 1965 by SIU’s School of Journalism. A national awards competition, it “celebrated excellence in incarcerated journalism,” according to the Pollen-SIU press release. “Intended to honor the journalistic efforts of incarcerated writers, the national competition showcased the public new kinds of prison coverage.”

We journalists, who are imprisoned, report from inside dwellings designed to sequester individuals and to withhold truth from power — and The People. It can be a risky undertaking to be a journalist inside a correctional facility in which stories and people are regulated by officials in a position to abuse their authority.

Some of our contemporaries — journalists on the outside — do not recognize us as “real reporters.” Many of them write about incarceration and carceral settings, yet they have never been inside a jail or prison, much less have they interviewed a person detained by the state. We incarcerated journalists do it every day.

For its work, San Quentin News won the American Penal Press Award for the Best Prison Newspaper in 1966, ’67, ’72 and ’81. In 1968, it also won the Charles C. Clayton award, named after the man who reportedly was the first person to teach journalism inside a prison.

By the 1970s, the American Penal Press Contest was at its height and fame. Each year, it received more than a thousand submissions from incarcerated journalists. The contest ended in 1991 as tough-on-crime edicts and mass incarceration became normalized civil rights tragedies.

Added to the problem of journalists’ imprisonment, I want to call attention to those who say “We’re not real reporters.” This is not to shame them, but to educate them and other journalism award organizations that acknowledge “real reporters” while bypassing us. If they choose to not know us, how can they possibly learn about us and our stories?

Lackadaisical and lazy reporting is sometimes willful, and it occurs on many levels. Take the many news reports about San Quentin in which “real” journalists still refer to it as a “maximum security” prison. Really? San Quentin has not been a high-security prison for more than 40 years, even when Death Row was still here.

Here is another example. Recently, I read a Courthouse News Service story. It showed a photo of prisoners at San Quentin, dressed in orange suits with “CDCR Prisoner” printed on the back of their shirts. The photo caption read, “General population inmates walk in line at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, Calif.”

General population inmates at San Quentin do not wear orange suits. That is attire for prisoners who were new arrivals at the prison’s reception center, which closed several years ago. That is why President Donald Trump has branded some stories “fake news.”

We journalists who are incarcerated are literally boots-on-the-ground, beat-walking reporters. We know the landscape because we are imbedded. In the last two decades we have made a comeback, too. We had to, because few people were telling our stories, and we were dying as a consequence.

Let me put that last statement in a different context and digress for a moment. In terms of reporting, prisoners have devised nuanced ways to dispatch information from prison. Under the First Amendment, we have the unique ability to report about issues having come to the fore through prison grievance processes. Exhaustion of this remedy is a requirement to file for legal action. In this way, the Plata and Armstrong cases began, which eventually tackled prison overcrowding in California.

News is disseminated with words and through World Press Freedom.  Now, with the return of the American Penal Press Contest, incarcerated journalists will once again receive their much deserved recognition.

Because of a growing number of prison publications around the country, many supported by Pollen Initiative, an organization with deep roots inside San Quentin News, many “real” journalists and writers have emerged.

Journalists who are incarcerated have something exciting to which they can look forward later this year, thanks to the commitment of the penal press. Three years ago, I quoted a San Quentin News editor who wrote: 

“[I]f the prisoner is not championed by his own people, just who the hell can he expect to do anything for him? And how else, except through the prison paper, is his side to be brought forward?” — San Quentin News, circa 1942.

I live and write by that quotation because freedom is still found through the press — on both sides of the prison gate.