Court Opinion

ID: 9419686
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:51:02.87771+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:19:26.104391
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
concurring.
The District Court properly applied the Sherman Law in enjoining the defendants from continuing to enforce *26the existing by-laws restricting membership in the Associated Press, and further enjoining the enforcement of another restrictive by-law forbidding Associated Press members to communicate “spontaneous” news to nonmembers. I would sustain the judgment substantially for the reasons given below by Judge Learned Hand. 52 F. Supp. 362.
The Associated Press is in essence the common agent of about 1,300 newspapers in the various cities throughout the country for the interchange of news which each paper collects in its own territory, and for the gathering, editing, and distributing of news which these member papers cannot collect single-handed, and which requires their pooled resources. The historic development of this agency, its world-wide scope, the pervasive influence it exerts in obtaining and disseminating information, the country’s dependence upon it for news of the world — all these are matters of common knowledge and have been abundantly spread upon the records of this Court. International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U. S. 215; Associated Press v. Labor Board, 301 U. S. 103. See Desmond, The Press and World Affairs (1937) Chapters I, II, III.
The by-laws in controversy operate in substance as a network of agreements among the members of the Associated Press whereby they mobilize the interest of all against the danger of competition to each by a present or future rival — to the extent that inability to obtain an Associated Press “franchise” is a serious factor in the competition between papers in the same city. While a member newspaper no longer has an absolute veto power in the denial of facilities of the Associated Press service to a rival paper applying for membership, for practical purposes there remain effective barriers to admission to the Associated Press based solely on grounds of business competition. As Judge Learned Hand has pointed out, the abatement in the by-law from a former absolute veto to a *27conditional veto against an applicant competing with an existing member “by no means opened membership to all those who would be entitled to it, if the public has an interest in its being free from exclusion for competitive reasons, and if that interest is paramount. Although, as we have said, only a few members will have any direct personal interest in keeping out an applicant, the rest will not feel free to judge him regardless of the effect of his admission on his competitors. Each will know that the time may come when he will himself be faced with the application of a competitor ... A by-law which leaves it open to members to vote solely as their self-interest may dictate, disregards whatever public interest may exist.” 52 F. Supp. 362, 370-371.
Indubitably, then, we have here arrangements whereby members of the Associated Press bind one another from selling local news to non-members and exercise power, which reciprocal self-interest invokes, to help one another in keeping out competitors from membership in the Associated Press, with all the advantages that it brings to a newspaper. Since the Associated Press is an enterprise engaged in interstate commerce, Associated Press v. Labor Board, supra, these plainly are agreements in restraint of that commerce. But ever since the Sherman Law was saved from stifling literalness by “the rule of reason,” Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 221 U. S. 1; United States v. American Tobacco Co., 221 U. S. 106; it is not sufficient to find a restraint. The decisive question is whether it is an unreasonable restraint. This depends, in essence, on the significance of the restraint in relation to a particular industry. Compare Chicago Board of Trade v. United States, 246 U. S. 231, 238.
To be sure, the Associated Press is a cooperative organization of members who are “engaged in a commercial business for profit.” Associated Press v. Labor Board, supra, at 128. But in addition to being a commercial *28enterprise, it has a relation to the public interest unlike that of any other enterprise pursued for profit. A free press is indispensable to the workings of our democratic society. The business of the press, and therefore the business of the Associated Press, is the promotion of truth regarding public matters by furnishing the basis for an understanding of them. Truth and understanding are not wares like peanuts or potatoes. And so, the incidence of restraints upon the promotion of truth through denial of access to the basis for understanding calls into play considerations very different from comparable restraints in a cooperative enterprise having merely a commercial aspect. I find myself entirely in agreement with Judge Learned Hand that “neither exclusively, nor even primarily, are the interests of the newspaper industry conclusive; for that industry serves one of the most vital of all general interests: the dissemination of news from as many 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. To many this is, and always will be, folly; but we have staked upon it our all.” 52 F. Supp. 362, 372.
From this point of view it is wholly irrelevant that the Associated Press itself has rival news agencies. As to ordinary commodities, agreements to curtail the supply and to fix prices are in violation of the area of free enterprise which the Sherman Law was designed to protect. The press in its commercial aspects is also subject to the regulation of the Sherman Law. Indiana Farmer’s Guide Co. v. Prairie Farmer Co., 293 U. S. 268. But the freedom of enterprise protected by the Sherman Law necessarily has different aspects in relation to the press than in the case of ordinary commercial pursuits. The interest of *29the public is to have the flow of news not trammeled by the combined self-interest of those who enjoy a unique constitutional position precisely because of the public dependence on a free press. A public interest so essential to the vitality of our democratic government may be defeated by private restraints no less than by public censorship. •
Equally irrelevant is the objection that it turns the Associated Press into a “public utility” to deny to a combination of newspapers the right to treat access to their pooled resources as though they were regulating membership in a social club. The relation of such restraints upon access to news and the relation of such access to the function of a free press in our democratic society must not be obscured by the specialized notions that have gathered around the legal concept of “public utility.”
The short of the matter is that the by-laws which the District Court has struck down clearly restrict the commerce which is conducted by the Associated Press, and the restrictions are unreasonable because they offend the basic functions which a constitutionally guaranteed free press serves in our nation.