July 17, 2012 1:38PM # The Muzzle Awards By [Tim Lynch](https://www.cato.org/people/tim-lynch) --- SHARE The *Boston Phoenix* announces its [15th Annual Muzzle Awards](http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/141253-15th-annual-muzzle-awards/): > The Muzzle Awards were inspired by noted civil-liberties lawyer and *Phoenix* contributor [Harvey Silverglate](https://www.cato.org/people/harvey-silverglate), who wrote the [sidebar ](http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/141254-muzzles-on-campus/)accompanying this article. They are named after similar awards given by the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Freedom of Expression. > > > This year’s edition, as always, was compiled by tracking the previous year’s free-speech stories in New England. Nominations were also solicited from American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) chapters in Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island. This article is based on reporting by various news organizations and Web sites — including the *Boston Globe*, the *Cambridge Chronicle*, the *Providence Journal*, the *Portland Press Herald*, the *Bangor Daily News*, the *Enterprise* of Brockton, the Associated Press, *Down East*, the *Republican* of Springfield, the *New York Times*, GoLocalProv, the *North Providence Breeze*, OpenCourt, wbur​.org, the New England First Amendment Center at Northeastern University, and Talking Points Memo. > > > The envelopes, please. ##### Related Tags [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).