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II. ON LIBEL AND PRISON INTERVIEWS. The court was sharply divided in each of three cases involving the press. One decision turned back an effort by American Opinion, the monthly magazine published by John Bircher Robert Welch, to invoke the so-called New York Times libel rule in a defamation suit brought against the magazine by a Chicago lawyer. The Times rule (named after a 1964 case) virtually immunizes publishers and broadcasters against libel suits by public officials and public figures except in instances of reckless disregard for the truth. In the American Opinion case, the court refused to accord the same protection to the press in libel suits by private individuals, even in cases of great public interest.
The decision was not all that ominous for the press. It made proof of both liability and damages more difficult to establish. Private individuals can no longer collect punitive damages in libel cases except when the conditions of the Times rule are met. And even compensatory damages can be collected only on proof of actual harm—such as pecuniary loss or humiliation. Thus the net effect of the decision is to cut back on the chance that any newspaper, magazine, book publisher, TV or radio station acting in good faith will ever have to pay any substantial libel claims. The decision drew Justice Byron R. White's wrath. He heatedly insisted that the ruling "goes far toward eviscerating the effectiveness of the ordinary libel action, which has long been the only potent response available to the private citizen libeled by the press."
In two cases concerned with prison interviews, the press fared less well. A divided court decided against the Washington Post and three California reporters by ruling that federal and state prison regulations banning interviews between inmates and reporters did not violate the First Amendment.
Justice Potter Stewart, ordinarily a champion of press rights, wrote both opinions. He held that the problems of deterrence, rehabilitation and the maintenance of order in prisons outweigh any infringement of free speech. Inmates, said Stewart, have alternative ways in which they can exercise their First Amendment rights (such as writing letters), while reporters were not denied any access generally available to the public. Stewart's argument did not convince the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, one of several press watchdog organizations. The committee denounced the decision as "a major constitutional defeat for the right of the public to know what is happening in our prison system."