Court reporter

“ Except in a special court-martial not authorized to adjudge a bad-conduct discharge, confinement for more than six months, or forfeiture of pay for more than six months, the trial counsel should ensure that a qualified court reporter is detailed to the court-martial. ”

“ In these circumstances, the court suggested that petitioner's memory and that of his counsel should have furnished an adequate substitute for a transcript. In addition, the court pointed to the fact that petitioner could have called the court reporter to read to the jury the testimony given at the mistrial, in the event that inconsistent testimony was offered at the second trial.
We have repeatedly rejected the suggestion that in order to render effective assistance, counsel must have a perfect memory or keep exhaustive notes of the testimony given at trial. ”

“ The law is not established, at least it has not been so declared, that reports can be private property. Essentially, their contents are public property. The knowledge of the decisions of courts should not be confined. It is consistent with the views of this court, that copies of their opinions should be multiplied to any extent, and in any form required. Publicity is the very thing required.
4. The reporter is a public officer, and his duty, by law, is, to publish. He has no liberty to keep back the matter which he collects and prepares, in the performance of his official duties. ”

“ Rather than directly argue that a plaintiff may have no redeemable reputation, respondents claim that a reporter, informed of prior accounts of alleged misdeeds of his subject, in effect can never be found to have acted with actual malice in making new allegations of comparable misdeeds against that subject. ”

“ With the enormous increase in criminal cases, reporters are often unable to keep up with the demand for transcripts and at the same time continue with regular reporting. Some reporters fail to make adequate arrangements for stenographers to transcribe their notes, which can be done by someone other than the reporter. ”

“ The Reporter of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is, I believe, authorized to report the decisions of the court more or less at length at his discretion. If he would exercise that discretion by an absolute refusal to print dissenting opinions, except in a few very great and exceptional cases, he would have the thanks of the profession. It may be harder to put a stop to the practice in the Supreme Court of the United States. That will have to be done, if at all, by the good sense of the Judges. ”

“ Events since 1972 continue to teach the same lesson that history taught the Court in Branzburg—namely, that the lack of a federal reporter’s privilege in the grand jury context has not had the negative effects that were predicted. Petitioners’ claim of adverse effects on news gathering amounts to an argument that proves too much: “If newsmen’s confidential sources are as sensitive as they are claimed to be,” as Branzburg observed, “it would appear that only an absolute privilege would suffice.” ”

“ If the profession and the country are indebted to the individual exertions of the reporter for valuable notes, which may have been usefully inserted to increase his emoluments, or enlarge his literary reputation, they are not at all connected with the work as described and exclusively claimed in the proceedings before the court. ”

“ The Court has already heard testimony from numerous eyewitnesses to the briefing. The Court has also heard testimony from an FBI agent who testified with the assistance of notes made during the briefing and another agent who testified from notes made within a short period of the briefing. Any testimony the reporter could offer would be merely cumulative and less than the best evidence available. There plainly are alternative means to obtain information about the briefing and the testimony of the reporter would be far less than necessary to a fair resolution of this case. ”

“ Oftentimes such men, particularly society criminals and others who possess an especial fear of having their wrong-doing known among their friends, try to keep from being written up by saying they are unwilling to make any kind of statement for publication, but that they will do so in court if anything is published about them. The reporter will not let such a threat daunt him. He will get the facts and present them to the city editor with the person's hint of criminal action, then let the city editor determine the problem of publication. ”

“ Under petitioner's proposed standard, an author in this situation would lack First Amendment protection if she reported as quotations the substance of a subject's derogatory statements about himself.
Even if a journalist has tape recorded the spoken statement of a public figure, the full and exact statement will be reported in only rare circumstances. The existence of both a speaker and a reporter ”

“ In Branzburg, the Court held that journalists, like other citizens, must “respond to relevant questions put to them in the course of a valid grand jury investigation.” 408 U.S. at 690-691; see Cohen v. Cowles Media Co., 501 U.S. 663, 669 (1991) (citing Branzburg for the proposition that “the First Amendment [does not] relieve a newspaper reporter of the obligation shared by all citizens to respond to a grand jury subpoena and answer questions relevant to a criminal investigation, even though the reporter might be required to reveal a confidential source”) ”

“ In criminal proceedings, a reporter moved to quash a subpoena duces tecum issued upon the defendants' application. The District Court, Charles R. Richey, J., held that the reporter was protected from the subpoena power of the criminal defendants by the newsman's privilege where there were alternative avenues for access to the information in the reporter's possession. Subpoena quashed. ”

“ As we shall see when we begin to write court reports, it is necessary to exercise every possible trick to put interest into the story. In the actual court room all that relieves the dreary monotony of legal proceedings is an occasional bit of interesting testimony. And when the reporter tries to report a case he sometimes finds that interesting testimony is all that will lighten up the dull monotony of his story. ”

“ The news itself is comparatively easy to get. In a large city every court is watched every day by a representative of the press, either a reporter for an individual paper or for a city news gathering association. In some cities where there is no independent news gathering agency papers sometimes club together to keep one reporter at each court. The man who is on duty must watch all day long for cases that are of interest for one reason or another. ”

“ The average man—the “man in the street,” as the journalist of to-day calls him—has no clear notion of the affairs of the County Court. He reads occasional paragraphs in the evening papers of some amusing incident, in which the humour of the Plaintiff or Defendant is capped by the humour of the playful and learned Judge, and the humour of the reporter, displayed in his dramatic sketch of the litigants, is the chief motive for the record of the case. ”

“ This most damaging story of the $200 bribe is wholly unsupported by the evidence. Accordingly, had the prosecutor written letters to the jurors retelling this story, of course we would reverse. He did the equivalent. For it is outrightly conceded that the Times reporter learned this tale from the prosecutor, and that four copies of the newspaper article were found in the jury-room on the third day of the trial.
'My colleagues admit that 'trial by newspaper' is unfortunate. But they dismiss it as an unavoidable curse of metropolitan living (like, I suppose, crowded subways) . ”

“ He must relate facts, if he can, but if he cannot, so much the worse for the facts; he must be entertaining and turn out something that is readable.
Suppose, for example, a reporter has to send to his paper the account of a police-court proceeding. There is nothing more important to bring to the office than the case of a servant girl who has robbed her mistress of a pair of diamond earrings. The English reporter will bring to his editor something in the following style:
Mary Jane So-and-So was yesterday charged before the magistrate with stealing a pair of diamond earrings from her mistress. ”

“ The defendants contend that the reporter's privilege does not apply to this case because Mr. Robinson has been subpoenaed regarding a book he is writing for his own personal gain and not for The Washington Post. The Court must reject any distinction on such grounds. First, the fact that the news gathering is conducted for financial gain is irrelevant. Reporters normally receive salaries for their news gathering efforts, Such financial gain does not taint the importance of the services to our cherished first amendment goals. ”

“ Respondents' Attempt to Create a New Variant of the Libel-Proof Plaintiff Doctrine - the Actual-Malice-Proof Reporter - is Not a Proper Basis to Deny Certiorari In the wake of the Court's explicit rejection of the incremental harm doctrine and implicit rejection of the libel-proof plaintiff doctrine in Masson, respondents attempt to achieve the same result by positing what in effect is an "Actual-Malice-Proof Reporter" doctrine. ”

“ Second, the reporter's privilege must encompass all news gathering efforts, not simply those for newspapers: "The press in its historic connotation comprehends every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion." Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 452, 58 S.Ct. 666, 669, 82 L.Ed. 949 (1938) .
Finally, the defendants contend that the proceedings in New York Times v. ”

“ Many volumes of Wheaton's Reports were on hand, unsold, at the time of the publication of the third volume of Condensed Reports.
The intention of the defendant was not to make an abridgement, but to make a substitute for the whole of the appellant's work. The reports of the appellant were the result of the joint action of congress and the reporter; they set the price. If congress had thought that the people should have them cheaper, they would have lowered the price. The defendant should not have run a risk in accommodating the public; they could judge for themselves. ”

“ See id. at 981-82 (Henderson, J., concurring) ; see also id. at 97677 (Sentelle, J., concurring) ; id. at 989-91 (Tatel, J., concurring) . Hence, future panels of this court remain free to recognize any privilege (or no privilege) consistent with the result in this case, and those panels may, as necessary, clarify the standards governing reporter-source relationships. Given that the panel here agreed unanimously on the result, this particular case presents no question of “exceptional importance” in the sense required by our rule on en banc review. Fed. R. App. P. 35 (a) (2) . ”

“ What does a newspaper do when it prints a photograph in these circumstances? It invites the whole country to scrutinize the features of the accused who has been arrested. That it does that act not in the course of preparation of the case for the prosecution but merely in the course of the conduct of a money-making business does not excuse in a newspaper that which would be reprehensible in a police officer. ”

“ A responsible press has always been regarded as the handmaiden of effective judicial administration, especially in the criminal field. Its function in this regard is documented by an impressive record of service over several centuries. The press does not simply publish information about trials but guards against the miscarriage of justice by subjecting the police, prosecutors, and judicial processes to extensive public scrutiny and criticism. ”

“ As we stressed in Estes, the presence of the press at judicial proceedings must be limited when it is apparent that the accused might otherwise be prejudiced or disadvantaged. [12] Bearing in mind the massive pretrial publicity, the judge should have adopted stricter rules governing the use of the courtroom by newsmen, as Sheppard's counsel requested. The number of reporters in the courtroom itself could have been limited at the first sign that their presence would disrupt the trial. They certainly should not have been placed inside the bar. ”

“ Precisely because the feeling of the outside world cannot, with the utmost care, be kept wholly outside the courtroom every endeavor must be taken in a civilized trial to keep it outside. To have the prosecutor himself feed the press with evidence that no self-restrained press ought to publish in anticipation of a trial is to make the State itself through the prosecutor, who wields its power, a conscious participant in trial by newspaper, instead of by those methods which centuries of experience have shown to be indispensable to the fair administration of justice. ”

“ For newspapers are conducted by men who are laymen to the law. With too rare exceptions their capacity for misunderstanding the significance of legal events and procedures, not to speak of opinions, is great. But this is neither remarkable nor peculiar to newsmen. For the law, as lawyers best know, is full of perplexities.
In view of these facts any standard which would require strict accuracy in reporting legal events factually or in commenting upon them in the press would be an impossible one. Unless the courts and judges are to be put above criticism, no such rule can obtain. ”