SPJ and 23 organizations have condemned a proposed Trump administration rule that would allow federal agencies to require employees to sign a standardized nondisclosure agreement, the Society announced June 9. If adopted, the rule “would give the federal government  a powerful weapon to silence public employees and trample on the free speech rights guaranteed to them by the United States Constitution,” SPJ said.

More from the SPJ statement:

—The rule, posted May 27 by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, would permit federal agencies to require all new and current employees to sign the proposed nondisclosure agreement. The proposed agreement bars employees from sharing non-public, confidential or proprietary information during their employment and indefinitely after leaving government service. In practice, imposing this requirement would effectively cut off the federal workforce from speaking to the press about their jobs.   

–Employees who violate the agreement could face disciplinary action, such as termination and disqualification from future federal employment. The government could also pursue civil and criminal penalties against current and former employees accused of violating its terms. Accordingly, federal employees who speak about their work could find themselves unemployed, barred from future federal service, and opposing the government in court.

Read the entire statement and the letter from the coalition here.

While inviting journalists to join the Society of Professional Journalists, we’re often asked what SPJ does for them. The short answer: Plenty. Slightly longer answer: One big way is that we speak truth to power when journalists are threatened, denied access or wrongfully accused.

Here are three examples from the last few weeks of how SPJ advocates on behalf of journalists and their interests and the preservation of a free, independent and assertive press, taken from SPJ News on spj.org. Find out more here about how to join SPJ.:

SPJ-led coalition urges VA to end investigations into employees for speaking to press — On May 12, SPJ, joined by a coalition of more than 20 press freedom, journalism and civil liberties organizations, sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Douglas A. Collins urging the Department of Veterans Affairs to end investigations into employees for speaking with the press in their personal capacities. The coalition also calls on the VA to review and revise any policies or practices that restrict such protected speech.

SPJ joins coalition urging DOJ to drop charges against journalists — On May 1, SPJ joined a coalition of civil liberties led by Amnesty International urging the U.S. Department of Justice to drop charges against journalist Georgia Fort and other members of the press. The charges brought against Fort stem from coverage of a January demonstration in St. Paul, Minnesota, protesting a large-scale federal immigration enforcement operation in the area. Fort and other journalists were present to document the event. In the days that followed, federal prosecutors pursued charges against multiple individuals, including members of the press.

SPJ condemns FCC overreach into broadcasters’ editorial independence — On April 29, SPJ strongly opposed the Federal Communications Commission’s order calling for a review of all ABC owned and operated stations’ licenses in apparent retaliation for broadcasting content the administration does not like. Weaponizing the license-review process against constitutionally protected speech not only represents a blow to press freedom but also undermines stations’ journalism ethics. The order that ABC renew all of its stations’ licenses follows a demand from President Donald Trump that the broadcaster fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel for a joke he made last week, in which he described Melania Trump as having “a glow like an expectant widow.” The subsequent FCC license-renewal order sends a chilling message, not just to ABC affiliates but to broadcasters and journalists nationwide, that publishing content deemed unacceptable by the administration may threaten their very existence.

Find out more here about how to join SPJ.

Yes, it’s that time of year again. In mid-May we’re still enjoying temperatures in the 90s, but a month from now it will be well over 100 degrees in Phoenix. Once more, we offer our prescription for relief and some camaraderie among media types: Our annual Summer Solstice Soiree, where you can enjoy a cold brew (or other beverages) on a very hot day with people who get you and what you do!

The actual solstice starts a few days later, in the middle of the night on June 21, but we can’t wait that long. So please join SPJ 5:30 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, June 16, at Arizona Wilderness Brewing Co.’s Miracle Mile location, 1418 E. McDowell Road (just west of the 51) in midtown Phoenix. As usual, the chapter is buying a sumptuous array of tasty appetizers while the drinks are on you.

Admission is free, but please RSVP so we can gauge how many appetizers to buy.

Chapter elections to be held

At the Soiree, we will take about five minutes (no more than that, we promise) to hold our annual elections by voice vote for the chapter offices of president, vice president, secretary and treasurer. Our Nominations Committee proposed the following slate of candidates: President, Tim Eigo, State Bar of Arizona; Vice President, Nicole Greason, Arizona State University (retired); Secretary, Mark Scarp, Arizona State University (retired); Treasurer, Sasha Hupka, Votebeat.

The one-year term for each office starts July 1 and ends June 30, 2027.

Again, please RSVP here. Thanks!

Fifty years ago, a Phoenix reporter lost his life when someone planted a bomb beneath his car and detonated it as he backed out of a parking space at a local hotel. What exactly happened to The Arizona Republic’s Don Bolles on June 2, 1976, and why, continues to fascinate the journalism profession, the state and nation five decades later.

Join Valley of the Sun SPJ as we gather the local media community to commemorate the life, career and death of this dedicated journalist at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 2, at Baseline Flowers, 3801 E. Baseline Road, Phoenix. Admission is free, but RSVPs are requested. See the link below to the event RSVP page.

Hear local journalist Jeremy Duda of Axios Phoenix, author of a new book about the Bolles assassination, “Murder in the Fourth Estate,” and Republic reporter Richard Ruelas, who has written extensively about Bolles. Also on the panel is George Weisz, who as a graduate journalism student worked on a comprehensive journalistic investigation into Bolles’ death, The Arizona Project. Later, as an investigator with the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, Weisz worked with prosecutors on cases against defendants accused of Bolles’ murder.

Light refreshments will be served at the June 2 event. Duda said he will bring copies of the book to sell and autograph at this event.

RSVPs are requested: Here’s a link to our Facebook event page about the commemoration. And here is a link to a story about the book that Duda wrote for Axios Phoenix.

Phoenix police detectives examine Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles’ car after a bomb exploded under it June 2, 1976, as Bolles was backing it out of a parking space at the Hotel Clarendon in central Phoenix. (Arizona Republic photo)

SPJ celebrations its annual Ethics Week April 27-May 1 with a pair of online panel discussions on the need for journalistic ethics and whether the Society’s venerable Code of Ethics should be revised. Also this week, the Society will present the inaugural Fred Brown Ethics in Journalism Award to some courageous college journalists.

Here’s the full schedule of events and how to sign up to view the discussions.

• At 4 p.m. Arizona time Tuesday, April 28, join SPJ Ethics Chair Dan Axelrod and a distinguished panel discuss “Blurred Lines: Should Journalists Be Defined and Regulated?”
• At 4 p.m. Arizona time Wednesday, April 29, Axelrod returns to moderate another panel to discuss “Why Revise the SPJ Code of Ethics Now, and What Should Be Improved?”
• This week, SPJ is presenting college journalists from Purdue University‘s The Exponent and Indiana University‘s Indiana Daily Student with the Fred Brown Ethics in Journalism Award, presented for the first time with the name of Brown, a former SPJ national president and champion of journalistic ethics, who died April 1. Read an SPJ statement detailing why the students were selected to receive this honor.

Photo by RGY23 from Pixabay

SPJ joined a coalition of journalists, journalism organizations and free expression groups in petitioning the White House Correspondents’ Association, urging it to use the platform of its annual dinner to defend press freedom amid ongoing threats to the First Amendment and to reaffirm the essential role of a free and independent press in American democracy, the Society announced April 20.

The petition calls on the association to send a forthright message to President Donald J. Trump condemning his attacks on the First Amendment.

“The collective weight of the administration’s actions — retaliatory access bans, coercive regulatory investigations, frivolous lawsuits against the press, defunding of public broadcasting, dismantling of international broadcasting, physical restrictions on journalists, personal verbal attacks on reporters, assaults on the media in official White House press releases and social media posts, the arrest of journalists, and the pardoning of those who committed violence against the press — represent the most systematic and comprehensive assault on freedom of the press by a sitting American president,” the letter warns.

The coalition also calls on the association to make clear that press freedom transcends politics, urging it to “reaffirm, without equivocation, that freedom of the press is not a partisan issue.”

In addition to SPJ, organizations among the petition’s signatories include the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Press Photographers Association, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Coalition for Women in Journalism and the Radio Television Digital News Association.

Read SPJ’s statement, the petition and full list of signatories as of April 23 here.

Conference speakers’ bios are at the bottom of this article.

This April, we’re presenting a powerful, exciting and fun spring journalism conference in the heart of Phoenix. All the connections, lots of skills, plenty of interaction – all revitalizing your drive to cover your beat. All of it will take place in one day. Everything will be on the same street and everything will be accessible by light rail. It includes a continental breakfast, lunch and a couple of receptions. And it’s only $49 for professionals, $29 for students. 

All journalists and journalism students are welcome – no need to be an SPJ member. When you visit the registration site, see our offer of free conference admission (that’s right, free) if you join SPJ or renew your current membership before the conference. Get more info and sign up today — as seats are limited — at https://spjphxconference26.eventbrite.com.

The Valley of the Sun chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists presents “It’s a Dry Beat: Speaking Truth in a Truthiness Age,” the 2026 SPJ Region 11 Conference. Join colleagues from Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada and the Mariana Islands on Friday, April 10, at the spacious modern facilities of the Flinn Foundation, 1802 N. Central Ave., Phoenix.

This is the conference you always wanted to attend, but the only ones out there were too long, too far away and too expensive:

·         A full day of incredibly useful workshops and spirited discussions about where journalism is heading and our best ways to prepare for it. A summary of the sessions is available at https://spjphxconference26.eventbrite.com, where you can also sign up for the conference.

·         At day’s end, colleagues at The Arizona Republic/azcentral.com are our hosts for a late afternoon reception and tour of their recently opened newsroom at Park Central, just a few blocks north of the Flinn Foundation building.

·         The evening before, Thursday, April 9, early arrivals are welcome to join us a few blocks south at a pre-conference happy-hour-style social gathering — the chapter is buying the appetizers — at a well-known historic Phoenix restaurant nearby.

Please join us on Friday. April 10. You won’t find anywhere a better deal to obtain so much useful, productive journalism knowledge in one day. Sign up at https://spjphxconference26.eventbrite.com. 

We’re grateful for the support of our conference sponsors: The Flinn Foundation, the national Society of Professional Journalists, the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism at Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, Sci Line of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and The Arizona Republic/azcentral.

Here are bios of speakers at the April 10 conference:

Robert Anglen is an investigative reporter for The Arizona Republic/azcentral, where he has worked since 2003. His award-winning stories have prompted government reforms, state and federal probes and criminal convictions. He specializes in white-collar fraud and complex financial schemes (investigating, not committing). He has written about the Mafia and organized crime, international charity scams and abuses within the probate court system. His stories led to the 2022 resignation of the Maricopa County attorney. He was the first reporter in the country to link deaths to Taser stun guns. On Sept. 11, 2001, he was only blocks away from the World Trade Center collapse and wrote first-person accounts from Ground Zero. He is the father of triplets.

Michelle Beaver is founder and director of News Literacy for Arizona, a free program that brings a 50-minute workshop on news literacy to high schools, libraries and community centers. She’s also director of the Arizona chapter of PEN America, is a teaching artist for ASU’s Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and recently completed her second health book for the Dummies franchise. Michelle ghost-wrote a New York Times best-selling health book, taught journalism at ASU and SCC, and has reported full time for the Associated Press and Bay Area News Group. She freelances extensively.

Greg Burton is executive editor of The Arizona Republic/azcentral and a regional editor for USA TODAY in the West, leading newsrooms in Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Nevada, California and Arizona. He began his career at the Lewiston Morning Tribune and then the Moscow-Pullman Daily News, writing about the environment during a period of upheaval over logging and mining, spotted owl protections and wilderness designations for old-growth forests and wild and scenic rivers. In 1997, he joined the Salt Lake Tribune. As a reporter and editor in Utah, he exposed the practice of forced incest and child abuse within polygamous clans and led projects on the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park and the battle over nuclear-waste storage at Yucca Mountain. Before the 2002 Winter Olympics, he uncovered secret gifts to the International Olympic Committee and helped chronicle the emergence of Mitt Romney as a national figure in the aftermath of the Olympic bribery scandal. In Arizona, Burton’s newsroom is a two-time Pulitzer finalist and Pulitzer winner in 2018 for The Wall, a landmark multimedia project that explores the border and former President Trump’s promise to build “a great wall.”

With 20+ years of experience in digital, tech, publishing and journalism, Iain Christie has been with the Google News Initiative for four years. He trains across journalism and audience/revenue covering the US and Canada.

Chelsea Curtis (Diné) is a reporter at Arizona Luminaria uncovering data and stories a bout Missing and Murdered Indigenous People in Arizona. Her work to launch a first-of-its-kind MMIP database was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Fund for Indigenous Journalists and the Data-Driven Reporting Project. Chelsea previously covered criminal justice topics and breaking news as a reporter at The Arizona Republic/azcentral and a wide range of community news at Today’s News-Herald (Lake Havasu City) and the Arizona Daily Sun (Flagstaff). She is a member of the Indigenous Journalists Association.

Elvia Diaz reports and comments from her own Substack newsletter, NOTAS con Elvia Diaz.  She is former editorial page editor, having overseen the editorial team at The Arizona Republic/azcentral in Phoenix. She worked at the Republic from 1999 to 2025.

Joseph Darius Jaafari is the founder and editor in chief of LOOKOUT News.

Jeff Julander began his financial services career after many years of managing Foot Locker retail stores in and around the Phoenix metropolitan area. He enjoyed working with customers but wanted a relationship-based career where he could help generations of families plan their financial futures. He partnered with Adam Kaplan in 1999 and has never looked back. He is a graduate of the University of Arizona, where he played collegiate volleyball. He has continued his support of the sport by refereeing both high school and college volleyball.

Adam Kaplan began his career in the financial services industry back in 1993 after careers as a sports journalist, behind-the-scenes technical support for ESPN TV, curator of his own sports shows on cable, as a grip in the movie industry, and videographer for ASU Football games, his alma mater.  He left those careers behind to find something more rewarding for himself while making an impact in as many lives as possible.

Cody Lillich joined Arizona’s Family Investigates in January 2022 and is the team’s senior investigative producer. He has worked on investigations that exposed train theft rings in rural Arizona with international ties and used public records to show how large investors were buying rental properties in Arizona at a time when rents were skyrocketing. Before Arizona, Cody was an investigative producer for WVUE-TV in New Orleans where he worked alongside the station’s chief investigative reporter Lee Zurik. During his time in New Orleans, Cody was part of an investigative team honored with multiple regional Emmy and Edward R. Murrow Awards. The team’s ‘Inspecting the Inspectors’ investigation looked into the missteps by city inspectors before the deadly 2019 collapse of the Hard Rock Hotel. The reports exposed that three city inspectors signed off on building inspections, while GPS coordinates on their city vehicles show they were never at the site on the dates in question. The team’s series of reports was honored with the 2021 National Edward R. Murrow Award for Large Market Television Investigative Reporting and nominated for a national Emmy award. Cody is a Texas native and previously worked at stations in Dallas, Bryan/College Station and Tyler, Texas.

Cheyanne Mumphrey reports on wellness trends and topics for The Associated Press.

Dianna Náñez is Arizona Luminaria’s Executive Editor and co-founder. She is an investigative journalist, narrative writer/editor and storytelling coach whose story of Indigenous and borderlands communities was part of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning Arizona Republic/azcentral team coverage. She served as a board member for NAHJ and is a member of the 2017 cohort of ASNE’s Emerging Leaders Institute.

Camryn Sanchez is a senior field correspondent at KJZZ covering everything to do with state politics. Previously, she worked at the Arizona Capitol Times covering the state Legislature, with a focus on the Arizona Senate and at The Arizona Republic/azcentral as a Pulliam Fellow covering the city of Phoenix before entering the state politics reporting arena. Sanchez studied journalism at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. In college, she interned at the East Bay Express in Oakland, ELLE magazine in New York, and the Yonkers Times in Yonkers, New York. Sanchez was given the Valley of the Sun chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists’ Presidential Award for her work investigating a state senator’s residency, after the senator in question filed an injunction against Sanchez, which was struck down in court.

Yvonne Wingett Sanchez is a staff writer at The Atlantic and is based in Phoenix, Arizona. She has a long track record of covering attacks on democratic institutions, election administration, legislative and legal battles over voting rules and access to the polls, and Arizona politics. She previously covered national, state and local politics for The Arizona Republic.

Lisa Simpson is senior vice president, programs and advocacy, for the Arizona Media Association and Arizona Local News Foundation.

Shawn White is publisher, CEO and Winslow reporter of the Painted Desert Tribune in Winslow, Arizona. He describes himself as “a 25-year-old trying to save a 115-year-old newspaper.

The ethics of secretly recorded videos of four ASU faculty and staff members discussing diversity, equity and inclusion at the university were questioned by SPJ Ethics Committee Chair Dan Axelrod, who described Accuracy in Media’s videos as “not journalism,” according to a report in the campus newspaper, State Press.

AIM has posted the videos, which have brought federal complaints from a conservative organization, the State Press reported March 5.

Saying the conversations were likely legally recorded as Arizona law allows only one-party to a  conversation to be aware it is being recorded, whether they were ethical is a different matter, the State Press quoted Axelrod as saying.

The rules of journalism ethics do not apply to the videos because “they’re not journalism,” Axelrod said in a statement. “To call those videos ‘journalism’ would be like mistaking Mickey Mouse for an actual mouse or fresh-squeezed juice for Hi-C fruit punch.” 

The campus newspaper quoted Axelrod as saying ethical journalism does not involve “deceiving, decontextualizing, entrapping, embarrassing and even, in some cases, intentionally harming those being covered to meet a predetermined objective or to support a particular view.”

Various federal courts have blocked and upheld the Trump Administration’s threat of withholding federal funding from colleges and universities with DEI policies. In January, the Department of Education dropped its appeal of one such ruling against the administration, The Associated Press reported Jan. 21.

Inside Higher Ed reported Feb. 26 that “recent statements and actions from the Trump administration suggest the effort to end all diversity, equity and inclusion programs is far from over. And other legal experts with more separation from the court cases warn that (the Education Department) and other federal agencies still have a variety of other tools to use in the DEI crackdown.”

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Arizona journalists have access to searchable data from statewide agencies and organizations, public opinion research on major issues, background information on topics Arizonans find important, a detailed list of expert sources and a variety of resources both veteran and novice newspeople will find helpful — all at a new website.

The Center for the Future of Arizona recently unveiled arizonamediainstitute.org, reflecting a commitment to “equip journalists covering Arizona with the tools they need to report accurately, efficiently and with local context. This nonpartisan resource brings together verified data, expert insights, and Arizona-based information on the issues shaping our state, all in one place,” according to the website.

AMI is working in partnership with the Arizona Media Association and the Arizona Local News Initiative to build and maintain the site, whose services and resources are offered free.

According to an AMI press release, “The launch of the Institute represents a bold and strategic first step, and it is intentionally just the beginning. Its tools and offerings are designed to grow over time through ongoing engagement, feedback, and collaboration with the journalists it serves.”

Visit the Arizona Media Institute website here.