Sinclair Broadcast Group, chaired by David D. Smith, made headlines earlier this month when the media conglomerate forbid the television stations it owns across the country from airing Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show following the remarks he made about the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Back in Baltimore, meanwhile, the newspaper that Smith personally owns, The Baltimore Sun, was clamping down on journalists with a proposed clause in their new contract that prohibits union members from making “false or disparaging statements” about the paper’s management or ownership.

“It’s egregious. It says any inquiry from the media we receive we should direct to management or our direct supervisor. That’s pretty frightening,” said Baltimore Sun Guild leader Dan Belson. “They’re trying to scare the union into silence.”

“I believe it disrespects the First Amendment,” said a fellow Sun reporter and Guild member, Hannah Gaskill.

Guild leaders say management, in defending the proposed gag rule, has blamed disparaging union statements for the circulation drop after Smith and his co-owner, Armstrong Williams, purchased the paper in January 2024.

Print and online circulation reportedly decreased significantly, including a fall-off of average weekly print circulation from an average of 27,926 for the year that ended September 2023 to 17,594 a year later.

(In early June 2024, the Sun had about 230,000 online and print subscribers, publisher and editor-in-chief Trif Alatzas told Poynter. In the early 1990s, The Morning Sun and Evening Sun’s combined print circulation hovered around 400,000.)

“They’ve justified the [no-disparagement] clause as a response to the union speaking out about our own working conditions, which is protected under the National Labor Relations Act,” Belson said. “We see it as a flagrant violation of our union’s rights. And it spits in the face of what journalism is.”

The gag rule is particularly chilling, members say, because it comes as part of the company’s “last, best and final offer,” made last month after more than a year of frosty negotiations. Since then, the Guild says, the company has refused to come back to the bargaining table.

“The company’s lawyer has directly told us, ‘I don’t have to meet you in the middle. I don’t have to meet you anywhere,’” said Belson, who reports on crime and criminal justice.

Alatzas has not responded to two requests for comment by The Brew.

“Fatal to the union”

The union hasn’t signed off on the non-disparagement clause or anything else in the company’s latest offer, according to Belson, because doing so “would be fatal to the union.”

“It claws back on a lot of the wins we’ve had for decades,” he said. “For example, it gets rid of tens of thousands of dollars of step raises for our newer members and hundreds of thousands in severance for our older members.”

The proposal contains “a lot of new management rights language, including being able to conduct medical examinations on employees with very, very few guardrails,” he added.

Under the company’s proposal, a 3% general wage increase would be effective upon implementation. There’s a potential across-the-board increase in year two at management’s discretion if they grant one to non-union employees and also potential monthly pay-for-performance bonuses for hitting click/subscription goals.

The union began negotiation with the newspaper’s new owners in June 2024 when its contract expired. Waging a campaign for public support, members blitzed social media and held informational picketing outside their downtown Baltimore office.

They noted that Sun employees haven’t had an across-the-board salary increase in more than a decade, but also pointed to changes in editorial policy that they said compromised journalistic standards.

• Baltimore Sun staffers decry “non-union, sub-standard” Sinclair content in the paper under its new owners (8/14/24)

Stories on hot-button crime and immigration issues began appearing that lacked context or used inaccurate terminology, they said. So did content from Sinclair’s flagship TV station, Fox 45, and articles from far-flung broadcast media markets and Sinclair’s National News Desk.

Social media was flooded with Sun subscribers saying they had canceled due to the paper’s new conservative bent under its unabashedly pro-Trump co-owner.

“I can’t believe that management thinks muzzling the Guild is going to keep people from understanding what these new owners have wrought,” Gaskill said, offering the example of the paper’s crime coverage.

“Public officials have used the word ‘fear mongering’ for it,” she said. “When the number of homicides in the city is at is at an all-time low, it seems dishonest.”

The Guild began to step up pressure on the company last winter, handing out material calling Smith “a union-buster” at various locations in the city, including at Tagliata, one of the upscale restaurants owned by Smith’s nephew, Atlas Restaurant Group President and CEO Alex Smith.

(The sidewalk outside Tagliata is where longtime Sun photographer and Guild leader Amy Davis confronted Smith directly, in a back-and-forth captured on video.)

Through it all, the news organization has turned out strong journalism, earning a Best of Show award, for example, from the MDDC Press Association for Breaking News coverage of the March 2024 Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse.

Dwindling Membership

Belson recently appeared with Gaskill on the Majority Report podcast with Sam Seder to talk about the management’s latest offer, and particularly the non-disparagement clause.

“They have decided, because we haven’t signed everything they put in front of us, they’re going to implement it anyway,” Belson asserted.

“It’s pretty illegal, we’re pretty sure,” Gaskill said, noting that they are consulting with lawyers at the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild.

Would Guild members ever go on strike?

“We’ll have to see about that,” Belson demurred

Guild membership has dwindled since Smith and Armstrong took over.

“We started 2024 with 55 Guild members, and we have roughly 36 now, including six that are new this year,” Belson said, adding that “we’re losing two more this week.”

One of those departures is Gaskill, who said her last day at The Sun is today, and that she is “hoping to transition into another journalism job soon.”

Asked what options the staff she is leaving will have, Gaskill said she’s not sure. “What I know that I will do is continue to support my brothers and sisters in the Baltimore Sun Guild, either from the sidelines or on the front lines.”