From the detention of journalists at Delaney Hall to the weakening of OPRA and proposed cuts to local news funding, New Jersey’s commitment to a free press is being tested.

When journalists covering protests outside Newark’s Delaney Hall detention center found themselves surrounded by police officers in riot gear Sunday night, it wasn’t just a problem for the reporters caught in the crowd. It was a problem for every New Jersey resident who depends on an independent press to document what the government does in their name.

Officers enforcing a city-mandated curfew detained and arrested credentialed photojournalists and independent reporters who were covering events outside the detention center. They were there to document it. When the press is prevented from doing its job in a public place, the public loses access to information it has a right to receive.

In 2021, New Jersey established clear expectations for how law enforcement should interact with journalists during protests. Then-Attorney General Gurbir Grewal issued statewide guidance affirming that journalists have a First Amendment right to report on protests without interference from law enforcement, including the right to record police performing their duties. The guidance noted that journalists are often exempt from curfews imposed during periods of unrest and emphasized that officers should exercise restraint when enforcing violations against reporters engaged in newsgathering. Those protections are rooted in a broader constitutional principle recognized nationwide: the public’s right to know depends on the ability of journalists to witness events firsthand and report on them without intimidation, detention, or unnecessary interference.

What happened outside Delaney Hall did not occur in a vacuum. It comes at a time when New Jersey’s commitment to a robust and independent press is being tested on multiple fronts.

Earlier this year, Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s proposed budget eliminated funding for the Civic Information Consortium, a nationally recognized program that has invested millions of dollars in local news, civic technology, and community information projects since 2018. The consortium has supported investigative reporting, public-interest journalism, and efforts to reach communities that have long been underserved by traditional media.

The proposed cut is particularly troubling because New Jersey already faces a severe local news crisis. Communities across the state have lost newspapers, reporters, and watchdog coverage. New Jersey has fewer reporters per capita now than any state in the nation. Newsrooms that remain are often operating with skeletal staffs and shrinking resources. The Civic Information Consortium represented one of the state’s few meaningful investments in rebuilding local information infrastructure. Eliminating that funding sends the wrong signal at precisely the wrong moment.

At the same time, New Jersey has moved in the wrong direction on government transparency.

In 2024, lawmakers approved sweeping changes to the Open Public Records Act that made it more difficult and costly for residents, journalists, and advocacy groups to obtain government records. The law was once considered among the strongest transparency statutes in the nation. Today, requests are more likely to be delayed, denied, or tied up in a lengthy Government Records Council review process that can take years. At a time when public trust in institutions is fragile, New Jersey has chosen to make government less visible to the people it serves.

Taken together, these developments paint a troubling picture. Journalists face obstacles while covering major public events. Public access to government records has been weakened. And one of the state’s most significant investments in local journalism is on the chopping block.

None of these developments alone defines New Jersey’s relationship with the press. Together, however, they reveal a state that is becoming increasingly comfortable with less scrutiny, less transparency, and less accountability.

This is happening against a national backdrop of growing pressure on press freedom. Across the country, journalists have faced increasing hostility, restricted access, and efforts to undermine public confidence in independent reporting. New Jersey has long presented itself as a state that values transparency, accountability, and democratic participation. But the actions of government officials over the past few years have increasingly called that reputation into question.

Gov. Sherrill still has an opportunity to demonstrate that those values remain priorities.

She should work with lawmakers to restore funding for the Civic Information Consortium in the final budget. State officials should provide a full public accounting of what occurred outside Delaney Hall, including how journalists were detained and arrested during crowd-control operations and what policies governed those decisions. And elected leaders should recommit themselves to strengthening public access to government records and restoring provisions of the Open Public Records Act that were weakened in 2024.

A free press is not a special interest. It is one of the few institutions designed to ensure that power remains accountable to the public.

When journalists are prevented from documenting events, when government records become harder to obtain, and when local news organizations lose the resources they need to serve their communities, it is not the press that suffers most. It is the public.

The question facing New Jersey is not whether it supports a free press in theory. The question is whether state leaders are willing to defend the transparency, accountability, and public access that make a free press possible. The answer will shape not only the future of journalism in New Jersey, but also whether residents have the information they need to hold public officials accountable.