ABSTRACT
During the past half century there have existed in this country two opposing constitutional traditions regarding the press. On the one hand, the Supreme Court has accorded the print media virtually complete constitutional protection from attempts by government to impose affirmative controls such as access regulation. On the other hand, the Court has held affirmative regulation of the broadcast media to be constitutionally permissible, and has even suggested that it may be constitutionally compelled. In interpreting the first amendment, the Court in one context has insisted on the historical right of the editor to be free from government scrutiny, but in the other it has minimized the news director’s freedom to engage in “unlimited private censorship”1 and has exalted the “right of the public to receive suitable access to social, political, aesthetic, moral and other ideas and experiences.”2 The opinions in each area stand apart, carefully preserved through a distinctive core of precedent, analysis and idiom.
