Court Opinion

ID: 9419840
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:51:46.91626+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:20.895699
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Rutledge,
concurring.
One can have no respect for a newspaper which is careless with facts and with insinuations founded in its carelessness. Such a disregard for the truth not only flouts standards of journalistic activity1 observed too often by *371breach, but in fact tends to bring the courts and those who administer them into undeserved public obloquy.
But if every newspaper which prints critical comment about courts without justifiable basis in fact, or withholds the full truth in reporting their proceedings or decisions, or goes even further and misstates what they have done, were subject on these accounts to punishment for contempt, there would be few not frequently involved in such proceedings. There is perhaps no area of news more inaccurately reported factually, on the whole, though with some notable exceptions, than legal news.
Some part of this is due to carelessness, often induced by the haste with which news is gathered and published, a smaller portion to bias or more blameworthy causes. But a great deal of it must be attributed, in candor, to ignorance which frequently is not at all blameworthy. 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. There must be *372some room for misstatement of fact, as well as for misjudgment, if the press and others are to function as critical agencies in our democracy concerning courts as for all other instruments of government.
Courts and judges therefore cannot be put altogether beyond the reach of misrepresentation and misstatement. That is true in any case, but perhaps more obviously where the judiciary is elective, as it is in most of our states, including Florida. See Storey v. Illinois, 79 Ill. 45, 52; (1927) 41 Harv. L. Rev. 254, 255. The question, and the standard, must be one of degree and effects. It cannot be placed at mere falsity, either in representation or in judgment. The statement, whether of fact or of opinion, must be of such a character, whether true or false, as to obstruct in some clear and substantial way the functioning of the judicial process in pending matters. Bridges v. California, 314 U. S. 252.2 It is not enough that the judge’s sensibilities are affected or that in some way he is brought generally into obloquy. After all, it is to be remembered that it is judges who apply the law of contempt, and the offender is their critic.
The statements in question are clearly fair comment in large part. Portions exceed that boundary. But the record does not disclose that they tended in any way to block or obstruct the functioning of the judicial process. Accordingly I concur in the Court’s opinion and judgment.

 See the following codes of ethics published in Crawford, The Ethics of Journalism (1924) App. A.: Canons of Journalism, adopted by the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1923, Art. IV; The Oregon Code of Ethics, adopted by the Oregon State Editorial Association in 1922, Art. I; South Dakota Code of Ethics, adopted by the South Dakota Press Association in 1922, “Truth and Honesty”; Missouri Declaration of Principles and Code of Practice, adopted by the Missouri Press Association in 1921, “Editorial.” And see in the same volume the extracts from rules and suggestions prepared by the following newspapers for the guidance of their staffs: The Brooklyn Eagle, The Christian Science Monitor, The Springfield Union, The Detroit News, The Hearst Newspapers (personal instructions given by William Randolph Hearst to his newspapers), The Sacramento Bee, The Kansas City Journal-Post, The Marion Star (written *371by President Harding when editing The Star). See also Sharkey, The Ethics of Journalism, An Address Delivered before the Press Conference of the World, Geneva, Switzerland, September 15, 1926, p. 10; Wicks, Ideals and Methods of English Newspapers, published in Journalistic Ethics and World Affairs, Addresses Delivered at the Fifteenth Annual Journalism Week at the University of Missouri, 1924, 25 U. of Mo. Bull. (No. 32) 25, 26; Gibbons, Newspaper Ethics (1926) 16 etseq.

 “Nor does the fact that the letter was false, while it greatly affects the moral quality of the act, determine its criminality. It is punishable only if it interferes with justice, and in that respect truth is harder to meet than falsehood.” L. Hand, dissenting in Ex parte Craig, 282 F. 138, 161, aff’d sub nom. Craig v. Hecht, 263 U. S. 255. See also the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Holmes, 263 U. S. at 281. But cf. In re Providence Journal Co., 28 R. I. 489, 68 A. 428; In re San Francisco Chronicle, 1 Cal. 2d 630, 36 P. 2d 369.