Court Opinion

ID: 9425880
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:05.55014+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:58.104411
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Douglas,
dissenting.
I adhere to the views which I expressed in Time, Inc. v. Hill, 385 U. S. 374, 401-402 (1967), and to those of Mr. Justice Black in which I concurred, id., at 398-401. Freedom of the press is “abridged” in violation of the First *255and Fourteenth Amendments by what we do today. This line of cases, which of course includes New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254 (1964), seems to me to place First Amendment rights of the press at a midway point similar to what our ill-fated Betts v. Brady, 316 U. S. 455 (1942), did to the right to counsel. The press will be “free” in the First Amendment sense when the judge-made qualifications of that freedom are withdrawn and the substance of the First Amendment restored to what I believe was the purpose of its enactment.
A bridge accident catapulted the Cantrells into the public eye and their disaster became newsworthy. To make the First Amendment freedom to report the news turn on subtle differences between common-law malice and actual malice is to stand the Amendment on its head. Those who write the current news seldom have the objective, dispassionate point of view — or the time — of scientific analysts. They deal in fast-moving events and the need for “spot” reporting. The jury under today’s formula sits as a censor with broad powers — not to impose a prior restraint, but to lay heavy damages on the press. The press is “free” only if the jury is sufficiently disenchanted with the Cantrells to let the press be free of this damages claim. That regime is thought by some to be a way of supervising the press which is better than not supervising it at all. But the installation of the Court’s regime would require a constitutional amendment. Whatever might be the ultimate reach of the doctrine Mr. Justice Black and I have embraced, it seems clear that in matters of public import such as the present news reporting, there must be freedom from damages lest the press be frightened into playing a more ignoble role than the Framers visualized.
I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.