Court Opinion

ID: 9463355
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:03:58.284422+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:02.926843
License: Public Domain

HUFSTEDLER, Circuit Judge
(concurring specially):
The holdings of Pell v. Procunier (1974) 417 U.S. 817, 94 S.Ct. 2800, 41 L.Ed.2d 495, and Saxbe v. Washington Post Co. (1974) 417 U.S. 843, 94 S.Ct. 2811, 41 L.Ed.2d 514, are not directly involved on this appeal. The thorny question is the interpretation of the broad statement in Pell that “newsmen have no constitutional right of access to prisons or their inmates beyond that afforded to the general public.”
I do not read Pell to mean that regulations that are reasonable in controlling access to prisons and prisoners by the general public will always pass the First Amendment test when the same regulations are imposed on the news media. In context, as I read Pell and Saxbe, the rationale means that the First Amendment does not give news media any special right of access to prisons or to prisoners and none that is not reasonably necessary to serve the public interest in being informed about prisons and prisoners. To the extent that a private person would be properly barred from interviewing prisoners or from entering portions of the prison that are private, the news media can also be barred. Neither Pell nor Saxbe involved the application of regulations imposing the same standards on news media personnel and members of the general public; in both instances the press had greater latitude than the general public. The Court did not purport to address the question whether news media could be confined constitutionally to regulations controlling access to prisons or to prisoners that govern group tours by the general public.
Although I do not disagree with Judge Pregerson’s statement that, under Pell and Saxbe, “the news media’s constitutional right of access to prisons or their inmates is co-extensive with the public’s right,” I do not believe that the statement is helpful in absence of any description of what the public’s right is or how the right is to be vindicated.
Two separate, but related questions are involved: (1) What kind of information about prisons and prisoners does the public have a right to know? Or, to put the question differently, from what kind of information about prisons and prisoners should the public be excluded? (2) What kinds of limitations can be imposed on the public and on the news media upon the means by which the information to which the public is entitled can be gathered?
The Court in Pell recognized that conditions in our Nation’s prisons are matters of great public importance about which the public should be informed. To that end, the public’s right to knowledge about the conditions of prisons and prisoners is very extensive. Information should not be curtailed except to the extent reasonably necessary to shield the prisoners’ small store of personal privacy, to protect the physical security of the prison, the prisoners, and the prison personnel, and to allow prison personnel enough privacy and administrative control to permit them effectively to perform their duties. As the eyes and ears of the public, newsmen are entitled to see and *296to hear everything within the institution about which the general public is entitled to be informed. The public is not entitled to know everything that the inmates say and do or everything that goes on in the prison. For instance, the public is not entitled to know the contents of the conversations between an inmate and his religious adviser, his lawyer, or his wife, nor to have a transcript of an executive session of prison administrators, nor to know the combination of prison locks. The interests in personal privacy, prison security and discipline, and effective management of the institution in these respects outweigh the public’s general interest in being informed about prison conditions. News media, as surrogates for the public, cannot claim any constitutional entitlement to acquire information from which the general public is appropriately excluded.
Assuming that the information to be gathered is of a kind that the public is entitled to know, the question then is focused on the means by which the information is to be acquired. Here, we are concerned solely with gathering information inside a prison. Prisons, like other public institutions, have some areas from which the public, whether represented by one private citizen or by a member of the news media, must be barred at least some of the time. A prison warden could no more do his job if his private office was always on public display, than could a judge if he were obliged to hold perpetual open house in his chambers. In addition, however, prisons present special problems that do not have exact ■ counterparts in other public institutions where security, discipline, and potential violence are not as omnipresent. Regulations controlling access to prisons and to prisoners, of course, can and should take these special circumstances into account. However, it does not follow that regulations that are reasonable under the circumstances as applied to touring groups of the public are also reasonable as applied to news media personnel.
Guided public tours and news media access do not serve identical purposes nor do they involve identical practical problems. Both kinds of visits are methods of providing to the public information about the prison and prisoners. The media mission, however, is different in degree, though not in kind, from the display to a tour group. The newsmen’s function is to gather, to collate, and to transmit to a wide public audience all of the information which the public is entitled to know about prison conditions. A private tour group might have similar or better ability to gather information than newsmen, but it would be rare that the combination of training and the means of transmission enjoyed by the news media would be found in a tour group. An adequate view of prison conditions is unlikely if the observer is confined to the areas of prisons and the times of visitation that are appropriate for conducted tours. As Judge Duniway points out, the administrative problems posed by newsmen and tour groups are very different. For instance, the public is entitled to know about the kind of food that is served and the circumstances under which it is prepared. It would be very difficult to guide a tour group through all of the steps of service and preparation without serious disruption of the service and the kitchen, but a small crew of media personnel could adequately observe and report the proceedings without undue interference. Moreover, it should be obvious that a candid view of prisons and prison life is not possible if both the news media and the general public are limited to white glove inspections at hours and on days scheduled by prison administrators for their own convenience.
I agree with Judge Pregerson that the preliminary injunction issued by the district court is consonant with the teaching of Pell and Saxbe.