Source: https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/438-u-s-1-606867190
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 16:27:05+00:00

Document:
438 U.S. 1 (1978), 76-1310, Houchins v. KQED, Inc.
Party Name: Houchins v. KQED, Inc.
After respondent broadcasting company, KQED, had been refused permission to inspect and take photographs at a portion (Little Greystone) of a county jail where a prisoner's suicide reportedly had occurred and where conditions were assertedly responsible for prisoners' problems, respondents brought this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against petitioner, who supervised the jail, claiming deprivation of their First Amendment rights. Thereafter petitioner announced a program of regular monthly [98 S.Ct. 2590] tours open to the public, including media reporters, of parts of the jail (but not including Little Greystone). Cameras or tape recorders were not allowed on the tours, nor were interviews with inmates. Persons, including members of the media, who knew a prisoner at the jail could visit him. The District Court preliminarily enjoined petitioner from denying KQED news personnel and responsible news media representatives reasonable access to the jail, including Little Greystone, and from preventing their using photographic or sound equipment or from conducting inmate interviews. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
Held: The judgment is reversed and the case is remanded. Pp. 8-16; 16-19.
or sources of information within the government's control. The news media have no constitutional right of access to the county jail, over and above that of other persons, to interview inmates and make sound recordings, films, and photographs for publication and broadcasting by newspapers, radio, and television. Pell v. Procunier, 417 U.S. 817; Saxbe v. Washington Post 417 U.S. 843. Pp. 8-16.
(a) The public importance of conditions in penal facilities and the media's role of providing information afford no basis for reading into the Constitution a right of the public or the media to enter those institutions, gather information, and take pictures for broadcast purposes. The First Amendment does not guarantee a right of access to sources of information within government control. Grosjean v. American Press, 297 U.S. 233, Mills v. Alabama, 384 U.S. 214, and other cases relied upon by respondents, concerned the freedom of the press to communicate information already obtained, but neither Grosjean nor Mills indicated that the Constitution compels the government to provide the press with information. Pp. 8-12.
(b) Whether the government should open penal institutions in the manner sought by respondents is a matter for legislative, not judicial, resolution. Pp. 12-16.
MR. JUSTICE STEWART, while agreeing that the Constitution does no more than assure the public and the press equal access to information generated or controlled by the government once the government has opened its doors, concluded that terms of access that are reasonably imposed on individual members of the public may -- if they impede effective reporting without sufficient justification -- be unreasonable as applied to journalists who are at a jail to convey to the general public what the visitors see. KQED was thus clearly entitled to some preliminary relief from the District Court, but not to an order requiring petitioner to permit reporters into the Little Greystone facility and requiring him to let them interview randomly encountered inmates. In those respects, the injunction gave the press access to areas and sources of information from which persons on the public tours had been excluded, thus enlarging the scope of what had been opened to public view. Pp. 16-19.
BURGER, C.J., announced the Court's judgment and delivered an opinion, in which WHITE and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined. STEWART, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 16. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BRENNAN and POWELL, JJ., joined, post, p. 19. MARSHALL, and BLACKMUN, JJ., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
excluding KQED news personnel from the Greystone cells and Santa Rita facilities and generally preventing full and accurate news coverage of the conditions prevailing therein.
Six monthly tours were planned and funded by the county, at an estimated cost of $1,800. The first six scheduled tours were filled within a week after the July 8 announcement.1 A KQED reporter and several other reporters were on the first tour on July 14, 1975.
In support of the request for a preliminary injunction, respondents presented testimony and affidavits stating that other penal complexes had permitted media interviews of inmates and substantial media access without experiencing significant security or administrative problems. They contended that the monthly public tours at Santa Rita failed to provide adequate access to the jail for two reasons: (a) once the scheduled tours had been filled, media representatives who had not signed up for [98 S.Ct. 2592] them had no access, and were unable to cover newsworthy events at the jail; (b) the prohibition on photography and tape recordings, the exclusion of portions of the jail from the tours, and the practice of keeping inmates generally removed from view substantially reduced the usefulness of the tours to the media.
In response, petitioner admitted that Santa Rita had never experimented with permitting media access beyond that already allowed; he did not claim that disruption had been caused by media access to other institutions. He asserted, however, that unregulated access by the media would infringe inmate privacy,2 and tend to create "jail celebrities," who, in turn, tend to generate internal problems and undermine jail security. He also contended that unscheduled media tours would disrupt jail operations.

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