The 2025 New England Muzzle Awards: Spotlighting the enemies of free speech and expression
Every year around this time, I take note of Independence Day by writing about outrages against freedom of speech that unfolded in New England during the previous year. It’s something I started doing in 1998 for The Boston Phoenix, and then later moved to GBH News after the Phoenix folded in 2013. (Here’s the complete archive.)
For the past several years I’ve been writing up Muzzles as they come in rather than waiting to do an annual roundup. I skipped writing a roundup altogether in 2023, so I guess this is the 27th annual edition of the New England Muzzle Awards.
This year’s Muzzle winners include Plymouth’s town manager, for attempting to intimidate and silence the nonprofit Plymouth Independent; the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, for muzzling the police chief and playing favorites with the press; and the mayor of Quincy, Massachusetts, for planning to install two religious statues on public property at the city’s new public safety building.
I’m especially pleased to be able to award a Muzzle to Trump’s shadowy top aide, Stephen Miller, for enabling the arrest of a Tufts Ph.D. student who helped write an op-ed piece for the student newspaper that he didn’t like.
Kudos, as always, to my friends Harvey Silverglate, who conceived of this annual feature all these years ago, and Peter Kadzis, who edited all 25 editions that appeared in the Phoenix and at GBH News. They were inspired by the Jefferson Muzzles, which no longer are awarded. Here in New England, though, their spirit lives on.
At a time when democracy itself is under threat, defending the First Amendment is more important than ever. The envelopes, please.
A Muzzle to Waltham’s local access outlet for trying to silence citizen journalists (July 29, 2024)
Muzzle Award follow-up: MIT denounces the antisemitic Mapping Project (Sept. 1, 2024)
A Muzzle Award to Mass. POST for spurning data needed to track police misconduct (Sept. 24, 2024)
Plymouth’s town manager earns a Muzzle for giving a local news outlet the silent treatment (Jan. 10, 2025)
In Vermont, a mayoral Muzzle for silencing the police and freezing out the press; plus, media notes (Jan. 13, 2025)
A Muzzle Award for a New Hampshire legislator who wants to make it easier to ban school books (April 28, 2025)
A New England Muzzle Award for Stephen Miller, who enabled Rümeysa Öztürk’s arrest for writing an op-ed (May 12, 2025)
A Muzzle Award for a judge who tried to stop a Muslim witness from testifying while covering her face (May 16, 2025)
What’s the Colorado angle in the NPR lawsuit?; plus, a Muzzle for Quincy’s mayor, and an AI LOL (May 28, 2025)
A Muzzle Award to Brown University, which investigated a student for committing journalism (June 5, 2025)