Press law

“ The question whether it is not advisable or even necessary to restrain by law the license of the press in attacking public men has often been argued, and plausible reasons have been adduced in favor of restrictive measures. In spite of many provocations I have had to suffer, I have always been decidedly opposed to such a policy. That the freedom of the press in the discussion of the merits or demerits of public characters is liable to gross abuse, is certainly true. But it is no less true that any restrictive legislation would be liable to abuse far more dangerous. ”

“ We have already reckoned upon the Press as a chief factor in the adequate criticism, cleansing, and modernisation of the British lawyer-politician; is there any power to which we may look for the security of the Press? And I submit the answer is the Press. For while the legal profession is naturally homogeneous, the Press is by nature heterogeneous. Dog does not eat dog, nor lawyer, lawyer; but the newspapers are sharks and cannibals, they are in perpetual conflict, the Press is a profession as open as the law is closed; it has no anti-social guild feeling ”

“ Freedom of the press may protect criticism and agitation for modification or repeal of laws, but it does not extend to protection of him who counsels and encourages the violation of the law as it exists. ”

“ As the Press, basing its pretensions on the liberty it enjoys under the Constitution, does not cease to publish all sorts of things, His Majesty, with a view to putting an end to abuses, and placing a curb on the license of the newspapers, commands your Highness to give the necessary orders in the proper quarter to complete within the delay of three or four days, the law on the Press, referred to in the Constitution. ”

“ It goes without saying, that since the press is allowed perfect freedom in its expression of opinion, and since the Constitution licenses it by asserting that no law shall abridge its freedom, and since its editors have often large abilities, the greatest power imaginable attends its utterances. ”

“ A printing house and its annexes, duly established as a press enterprise under law, and press equipment shall not be seized, confiscated, or barred from operation on the grounds of having been used in a crime. D. Right to use media other than the press owned by public corporations ARTICLE 31- Individuals and political parties have the right to use mass media and means of communication other than the press owned by public corporations. ”

“ In its modes of expression, the newspaper press of our country usually keeps far within the bounds which the law prescribes; it voluntarily prescribes for itself a law which has no authority save that of taste. ”

“ In these instances one glimpses the constant friction between the army and the press, but so utterly lax was the treatment of war correspondents that these few cases of discipline had, after all, but slight effect upon the whole problem of news control.
Action against newspapers in the civil courts yielded no results. In the first place, the whole genius of American law is opposed to the prosecution of journalists for such utterances in their papers as constitute offenses against the government. ”

“ Whether the national government possesses a powder to pass any law, not restraining the liberty of the press, but punishing the licentiousness of the press, is a question of a very different nature, upon which the commentator abstains from expressing any opinion. ”

“ But though a newspaper may publish without government censorship, it has never been entirely free from liability for what it chooses to print. See ibid. Among other things, the press has not been wholly at liberty to publish falsehoods damaging to individual reputation. At least until today, we have cherished the average citizen's [p262] reputation interest enough to afford him a fair chance to vindicate himself in an action for libel characteristically provided by state law. ”

“ In the instant case, the district court acknowledged that " [t] he size of the audience before which a work is performed cannot be the basis for a court's finding that a general publication has occurred." 13 F.Supp.2d at 1352.
With respect to the significance of the Speech in terms of newsworthiness and history, the case law again suggests that this feature should not play a substantial role in the analysis. As noted above, the D.C. Circuit in Rickover indicated that the wide press distribution of the speeches at issue there would not alone have constituted a general publication. ”

“ It may be argued that other professions are distinguishable because practitioners may insure against liability. But this course is also open to the press. Developments in the Law, Defamation, 69 Harv.L.Rev. 875, 906.↑ This Court has never held that the press has an absolute privilege to publish falsity. There is nothing in the history of the First Amendment, or the Fourteenth, to indicate that the authors contemplated restrictions on the ability of private persons to seek legal redress for press-inflicted injury. ”

“ But part of this responsibility is to preserve values and procedures which assure the ordinary citizen that the press is not above the reach of the law-that its special prerogatives, granted because of its special and vital functions, are reasonably equated with its needs in the performance of these functions. ”

“ But it is recognized that punishment for the abuse of the liberty accorded to the press is essential to the protection of the public, and that the common law rules that subject the libeler to responsibility for the public offense, as well as for the private injury, are not abolished by the protection extended in our constitutions. Id., pp. 883, 884. The law of criminal libel rests upon that secure foundation. There is also the conceded authority of courts to punish for contempt when publications directly tend to prevent the proper discharge of judicial functions. ”

“ We are all old offenders; there is not one of us who has not been prosecuted for press offenses. We are known at all the district courts in France. The Advocate-General has boasted to us of the liberalism of the press laws which enable us to be tried before a jury of our peers, according to his expression. ”

“ The rule for which the plaintiff contends would effect an important extension of property rights and a corresponding curtailment of the free use of knowledge and of ideas; and the facts of this case admonish us of the danger involved in recognizing such a property right in news, without imposing upon news-gatherers corresponding obligations. A large majority of the newspapers and perhaps half the newspaper readers of the United States are dependent for their news of general interest upon agencies other than the Associated Press. ”

“ I see no force in the argument that to exclude television apparatus from the courtroom, while at the same time permitting newspaper reporters to bring in their pencils and notebooks, would discriminate in favor of the press as against the broadcasting services. The distinctions to be drawn between the accouterments of the press and the television media turn not on differences of size and shape but of function and effect. The presence of the press at trials may have a distorting effect, but it is not caused by their pencils and note books. ”

“ I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power, but it is evident that it would furnish to men disposed to usurp a plausible pretence for claiming that power. They might urge, with a semblance of reason, that the constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication that a right to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was intended to be vested in the national government. ”

“ In other places, he seems as explicitly to admit, that the liberty of the press does not include the right to do injury to the reputation of another, or to take from him the enjoyment of his rights or property, or to justify slander and calumny upon him, as a private or public man. ”

“ Public officers, whose character and [p719] conduct remain open to debate and free discussion in the press, find their remedies for false accusations in actions under libel laws providing for redress and punishment, and not in proceedings to restrain the publication of newspapers and periodicals. The general principle that the constitutional guaranty of the liberty of the press gives immunity from previous restraints has been approved in many decisions under the provisions of state constitutions. ”

“ To authorize a civil suit for an injury inflicted by the press, would necessarily operate as some restraint upon what the defendant calls the liberty, but what seems to me to be the licentiousness of the press. The power which determines in what form and to what extent a publisher shall be responsible, must, from its nature, be the legislative power. The above concession admits that libellous publications may be individual wrongs. Every crime is a private injury, as well as a public offence. ”

“ Nowhere else in the world has the liberty of the Press so degenerated into license. No newspaper in any country in the world would for one moment dare to speak of the Government, the Legislature, and authorities of the country as the ‘‘Star’‘, the ‘‘Transvaal Leader’‘, and similar newspapers do every day in this Republic. ”

“ Let it be remembered, then, as a starting point, that the press is amenable to the people; that it is controlled and regulated by them, and indebted to them for whatever measure of freedom it enjoys.
The scope of this liberty is carefully defined by the statutes, as also the method by which its transgression is to be punished. These enactments minutely define the nature of an infringement of their provisions, and point out the various methods of procedure in order to redress private grievance or to punish public wrong, in such instances. ”

“ A business 'is not immune from regulation because it is an agency of the press. The publisher of a newspaper has no special immunity from the application of general laws. He has no special privilege to invade the rights and liberties of others.' Associated Press v. ”

“ There is a good deal of loose reasoning on the subject of the liberty of the press, as if its inviolability were constitutionally such, that, like the king of England, it could do no wrong, and w as free from every inquiry, and afforded a perfect sanctuary for every abuse ”

“ A generation ago government regulation of railroad rates, foodstuffs, and the size of business combinations would have been regarded as unjustifiable interference with personal liberty. To-day any government interference with newspapers is considered as an attack on the freedom of the press. Is it not possible that the next generation may see every newspaper of this country compelled by public opinion, if not by legislation, to give complete, unbiased reports of all events of general interest? ”

“ Legislation of the type of the ordinance in question would restore the system of license and censorship in its baldest form.
The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets. ”

“ The press, in fact, 'serves one of the most vital of all general interests: the dissemination of news from as may different sources, and with as many different facets and colors as is possible. That interest is closely akin to, if indeed it is not the same as, the interest protected by the First Amendment; it presupposes that right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection. ”

“ Woven into the fabric of the First Amendment is the unexceptionable, but nonetheless timeless, sentiment that "liberty of the press is in peril as soon as the government tries to compel what is to go into a newspaper." ”

“ Equally wanting in force is the further contention that because the regulation in the second paragraph to the effect that paid matter shall be marked as advertisement is sanctioned by a penalty, therefore, at least, as to such provision, an independent regulation of the press was intended, divorced from the requirements as to entry contained in the first paragraph. ”

“ The most acute problem of this vexed time is the ever-growing power of the newspaper press. Legislation of a drastic kind is needed to cope with certain newspaper ‘bosses’ in Great Britain and America and their combinations, national and international, of periodicals, agencies, special correspondents and their sinister antennae, which persistently foul at the source the wells of truth. ”

“ Nor can the courts be said to discriminate where they permit the newspaper reporter access to the courtroom. The television and radio reporter has the same privilege. All are entitled to the same rights as the general public. The news reporter is not permitted to bring his typewriter or printing press. When the advances in these arts permit reporting by printing press or by television without their present hazards to a fair trial we will have another case.
Court proceedings are held for the solemn purpose of endeavoring to ascertain the truth which is the sine qua non of a fair trial. ”

“ It is not, of course, always the case that information lawfully acquired by the press is known, or accessible, to others. But where the government has made certain information publicly available, it is highly anomalous to sanction persons other than the source of its release. ”

“ Besides:—What is meant by restraint of the press, or an abridgment of its liberty? If to publish without control, or responsibility be its genuine meaning; is not that equally violated by allowing a private compensation for damages, as by a public fine? Is not a man as much restrained from doing a thing by the fear of heavy damages, as by public punishment? Is he not often as severely punished by one, as by the other? Surely, it can make no difference in the case, what is the nature or extent of the restraint, if all restraint is prohibited. ”