Screenshot of Keith “Malik” Washington from an October 2020 interview with the group Defending Rights & Dissent. SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — Private prison officials seized a newspaper editor’s phone and delayed his release from a halfway house after he shared information about a Covid-19 outbreak at the facility, the journalist claims in a lawsuit filed Monday. Keith “Malik” Washington became an advocate for prison reform and exposing civil rights abuses behind bars when he served time at a Texas penitentiary, he said in a recent video interview. Last year, Washington became editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Bay View, one of the most prominent Black community newspapers in the nation, after its longtime editor, Mary Ratcliff, retired after 44 years in that role.