Opinion ID: 479203
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Selective Application of Protective Orders

Text: 23 The district court demonstrated a sensitivity to first amendment concerns by striving to keep the protective orders as narrow as possible. The press had had almost three years of unrestricted access to the products of discovery. Only when the trial was approaching did the court determine that there should be no further release of information until the jury had been selected. The September 4 order's prohibition on public statements was not included in the October 8 order, and the news media were allowed access to materials considered in connection with a motion for summary judgment. This action was consistent with a public right of access to materials considered in rulings on dispositive pretrial motions, a position at the farthest reaches of the first amendment right to attend judicial proceedings. See In the Matter of Continental Illinois Securities Litigation, 732 F.2d 1302 (7th Cir.1984); Joy v. North, 692 F.2d 880 (2d Cir.1982), cert. denied, 460 U.S. 1051, 103 S.Ct. 1498, 75 L.Ed.2d 930 (1983). 24 The court's exception for disclosures to public health and environmental authorities had a compelling justification. In a case involving allegations that a city's water supply had been poisoned by toxic chemicals, the public interest required that information bearing on this problem be made available to those charged with protecting the public's health. 25 This limited exception for disclosures to health officials would not by itself have defeated the protective order's intended goal of preventing a saturation of potential jurors with news reports of the allegations being made against the defendants. As long as dissemination of the information was not released to the general public, the court had good cause to continue the protection. The orders, however, were not drafted to prevent those granted access to discovery materials from further disseminating the information. Indeed, the court said that it did not care if the information reached the newspapers as long as it was the environmental or health officials--federal, state, county, or local--who released it. 26 The hearing transcripts suggest that the court thought that restraints on the environmental and health officials' discretion to disseminate the protected information were unnecessary because they would only release the information if it was necessary to investigate a threat to the public health. Under such circumstances, the court presumably would release the information itself. But the parties' experts were given similar, albeit more limited, authority to disseminate the information. They were allowed to divulge the information obtained from the discovery materials in their academic courses and symposia and in articles in learned journals, but excluding press releases and interviews to be published by media of general distribution. Apparently, the case had attracted considerable attention in the academic community and the court did not want to shut off its access to the material. But nothing prevented the dissemination of the information to the general press and public as long as the release was made initially in an academic setting or learned journal. The district court in effect gave designated individuals the ability to control public access to discovery materials. This made the protective order untenable. 27 The district court also granted WGBH, a media entity, access to the discovery materials for a program that was aired after the jury had been selected. This was consistent with the court's efforts to keep the protective order as narrow as possible. Our main concern with the exception for WGBH, however, is not with the jury's exposure to the information, but with the government's granting of access only to designated media entities. There may be a rare situation in which continued application of a protective order could be justified after one media entity but not another was granted access. We cannot, however, think of one. The district court reasoned that it could grant WGBH access and still prevent jurors' exposure to the television broadcast. But this exception gave WGBH the exclusive ability among the media to gather information and release it to the public. By the grace of the court, WGBH became a privileged media entity that could, over a four-month period, review otherwise confidential information and shape the form and content of the initial presentation of the material to the public. It is of no consequence that others could then republish the information WGBH had chosen to release. A court may not selectively exclude news media from access to information otherwise made available for public dissemination. See American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. v. Cuomo, 570 F.2d 1080, 1083 (2d Cir.1977); McCoy v. Providence Journal Co., 190 F.2d 760, 766 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 342 U.S. 894, 72 S.Ct. 200, 96 L.Ed. 669 (1951). The danger in granting favorable treatment to certain members of the media is obvious: it allows the government to influence the type of substantive media coverage that public events will receive. Such a practice is unquestionably at odds with the first amendment. Neither the courts nor any other branch of the government can be allowed to affect the content or tenor of the news by choreographing which news organizations have access to relevant information. The district court erred in granting access to one media entity and not the other. 28