ABSTRACT

Before turning to the provocative issues posed in this symposium on the First Amendment and the Media, it may be well to pause by way of introduction to consider a preliminary constitutional issue. In the voluminous discussions, judicial and otherwise, of the rights of the media, one issue appears to have been virtually ignored. 1 That the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of expression, whatever its scope, may be claimed not just for newspapers and other printed publications, but also for motion pictures, 2 and radio and television broadcasts 3 is clear enough. Freedom of the press amounts to freedom of "the media." 4 But the constitutional text protects against "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." 5 Why this duality? Is any freedom conferred upon "the press" by the freedom of the press clause which would not be available to it (as well as to nonmedia speakers) by the freedom of speech clause? Alternatively, may it be argued that a separate press clause implies that speech via the press is subject to some restraints that would not be applicable to other speech? If each of these inquiries is to be answered in the negative, does this mean that "freedom of the press" is a meaningless appendage to the speech clause?