The First Amendment; Privacy

The eastern Public Radio Network in cooperation with the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University now presents the First Amendment and a free people a weekly examination of civil liberties in the media. In the 1970s the host of the program is the institute's director Dr. Bernard Reuben. My guest on today's program are Scott lo the publisher of The Patriot Ledger and of Quincy Massachusetts who is also president of the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association and a graduate of mill mill Middlebury College in Vermont. He's going to be talking about privacy and the press with me today along with Bill Plante of Newburyport Massachusetts the executive editor of the Essex County newspapers which is for community daily newspapers and for weeklies in the north of Boston. Bill as well very well-known to people who watch television as a former panelist on the fame program starring the editors. He's a Boston University

graduate with his bachelor's degree in journalism a member of the New England academy of journalists and serves Massachusetts daily newspapers as vice president for Constitutional Affairs. Gentlemen let me say this at the start of our discussion of how much privacy should be as regards the press. You both have individual views on it and they are distinctively separate although overlapping Perhaps I'd better as Bill Plante first just to give us a summary statement of what he considers a major concern of his about privacy issue. How You just redefine opposition is from my point of view there are nuances of the same thing they are somewhat different but I think on basic premises perhaps we we are in agreement. I feel I guess with that we have to take a very aggressive stand here because of the momentum that's swinging down the road on this privacy business it's like someone dropping a stone off a mountain and starting an

avalanche. My basic position is that in an open society there is a need for the public to know the walk and will for the fabric of that society and we when we begin to close doors in that society we do so at the peril of the original experiment. So I take a very strong position in that recognizing at the same time that there are there are obviously rights of privacy I have my own rights of privacy that I protect but I think that we have to proceed the press has to proceed from an aggressive posture or we will be overrun by the right of privacy interests which are sweeping like a like a cycle through the country. OK. SCOTT Well I think I come at the question. I'm a slightly different point of view than Bill does in in looking at the question of an open society and a society that that has an increasing degree of interdependence in all of us a society. And

looking at the the major social issues of our time as being confrontations or conflicts of various rights are individual in and otherwise. And that's true of the abortion issue in a number of other issues that have been in the news over the last decade. It's also true of the question of the right of privacy versus the rights of the free press. The concerns that that I have are are that I don't think it's a black and white issue by any means and I have great personal qualms as to how we define the public as a generic monolithic entity or the presses as a generic monolithic entity because I think that there are many publics and the press has many different elements within itself all of which have different needs and perceive the services that they render to

their various publics in quite different ways that are that are hard for anyone to speak of in a general sense. Bill you alluded to the privacy people privacy movement. Obviously you have strong feelings about what you consider to be a wave a tidal wave of change here led by some groups that you call the privacy groups. How would you how do you define them who are they. Well let me back up just a little bit. I think it has momentum from two sources. One is the the nightmare on and on covered by the Watergate mess with the obvious invasion of the privacy of individuals by police agencies politically directed. I think that's a great momentum I think the other thing is the technological dynamic which as and brace the country with so much private information being keyed into our social security numbers are

our private business as it were that's available at the touch of a computer and partly by people who know how to use them. And couple that with the frustration and some of the those interested into what I call the social technocrats who who are who are attempting to deal with the real problems that we have and corrections for example the corrections system is an obvious failure. Rather than to treat with the the nature of the system itself it seeks to protect the product of the system by letting him in the under a blanket as it were as though he had clean hands when indeed he might have unclean hands. My feeling is that and I don't think you can say it's from any one source I find politicians who are very strong in this area. I find those I would I would consider be campus theoreticians

elitists who are pursuing this goal down what I consider to be a long long narrow corridor looking at the light and ignoring the doors at the side. There there is a core I think a legal core of very bright highly intelligent socially minded people who have this view. And in Massachusetts in particular they have succeeded in pursuing it I think exceptionally well from their point of view that there are too many invasions of privacy. This this court is pursuing a course which would close doors to prevent invasions of privacy primarily in the in the criminal area in the hopes that they can provide a climate in which the criminal can be rehabilitated.

And while the goal might sound attractive I just think that there are incredible number of traps for society itself along this path. Let's let's start with the courts now and say that the set up there are test case the the bus driver who is a sexual deviant with with youngsters in charge to his care that that's the case that gets everybody horrified any such case does. But what are the issues now. What protections should the press afford on two part to privacy and what areas are immune to restriction and the press should be allowed in. You want to start that one's got. I think we're talking about two separate things. I don't think that that I would maintain that the press has a right to find out whether an applicant for a position as a school bus driver has a prior criminal record as a sexual deviant. But I I do think that employers

who offer positions that that expose their employees to the public whether it's school school bus passengers in this case small children or banks where where their employees would have access to money and could potentially be convicted embezzlers or a wide range of things like that that someone who is in a position to make a decision in the hiring process opt to be able to have access to that information where there are legitimate risks or legitimate questions. How would that be done without the press. In other words to say that I'm hiring a school bus driver I'm hiring somebody to be the cashier in my bank. The courts don't turn over this information. Who would turn it over who would make it generally known. The criminal justice system I believe is the repository of most of that information. And I think that there's a need for people who are hiring into sensitive positions

or for for for instance for military recruiters to have access to to records that indicate whether the people that they might be taking into the service are convicted felons or have other prior records that might might make a difference in the selection process or the training process or for instance people who would be in positions of driving automobiles as as a means of earning a living who might have terrible driving records that would say that while a person may be a solid citizen that with four prior quick convictions for drunken driving there may be some legitimate question as to whether that person should be entrusted with a vehicle would use some sort of a computer check. Now I'm applying for a job as a cashier in a bank and my name is automatically put into a computer check which tests for certain criteria. If those if those if that data doesn't show up then my privacy is not invaded anymore is this

what you're saying. I'm not saying that the public should have access in this case. Nobody had a lawyer that I think there are more people with a need to know who who ought legitimately to have that. And that's quite a different area than the areas that the press people are fundamentally concerned with in trying to serve those things that represent what I would call the public need to know in that I think the press is essentially is is to serve as an information source to the public in providing information that the community or segments of the community have a legitimate need to know in the conduct of their daily affairs bill. Well as a vicious kind of a circle here one can argue it in either direction. We know that there's a high recidivism rate of people who are criminals arrested time and again trucked back to jail.

So we know that criminals are really being released in society. You know those who deal with the problem say well if society didn't know that this man was a criminal this woman was a criminal. He or she might be able to get a job and rehabilitate themselves but the very knowledge of that makes it impossible for them to be rehabilitated because society rejects them. The effort for is as I mentioned earlier is to is to cloak it all and to pretend that the slate is wiped clean. Would that it were would that we had the ideal correction system but it's not. Now the question is whether society has a need to know that a certain percentage of criminals confirmed criminals I'm not talking about with a one time or one time victim of crime victim of crime but the perpetrator of crime is out there. It needs to know what it is like that is it needs to what society itself is

like. If it is if it hopes to be able to adopt those changes let's say in the correction system or if it's in the judicial system in the judicial system it needs to know about its judicial system its corrections system and it can only know it in terms of how it functions how it operates. Give me an example from some stories that you've handled over the years on the Essex County newspapers. You're pretty close to the small community is mentioned here again though there's an old case but we had a notorious murder case and the murder and I won't mention here male a female was returned to society and lived a productive life in the small community. It can happen. Everyone in the community knew all the details and. This was many years ago many years ago the person was returned to society and they had been off for the problem and the situation

which is trying a familiar worked out all right now you can mention a thousand other cases were didn't work at all. I think there has to be a public acceptance of the fact that people do things wrong things and we tried to correct the wrong things. Hopefully they'll work and many times they will not. The public ought to accept someone who has paid his or her penalty. The public frequently does not. But by pretending that it didn't happen by cloaking it by hiding the record I think in the long run serves society ill. No you are I'm just trying to get the facts are that you ran the story or the original It was a notorious story yes and you were only off the return of the person to the community did you. Do you use Paypal document that instrumental and helping to provide for them so that when that person returned to the community it was the information was disseminated through your newspapers. And all went well. Have you done it the other way at any time. Have you

made an editorial decision. No we won't produce information on this subject. Yes. Could you give me an example of it rather not this instance. This is a different set of circumstances maybe go and make it make it into a into a model case without going into the facts. Give me a sample doing that. This was because he was not as notorious a case. OK it was a one time affair. There were some problems that I really would rather not go into at this moment in this in this instance and everything is fine. But the community affected is well aware of the situation. I have been told for example that youngsters from suburban communities get picked up in Boston quite a bit simply because there are so many youngsters in suburban communities it would be unusual if nobody was picked up by the police in Boston and Saturday night or what not and that the local newspapers kill most

of those stories I have been told this that they don't play it up at all. Let me tell you what's happened there's a new mitigating circumstance here now because nowadays what happens is that there's no dramatic return because of the furlough system I think the furlough system has been a great advance because what happens is there's a gradual return. So there really is no news of that. I'm not talking about people who have gone to prison I'm talking about people who face the bar of justice and and it is not news in their town at all. It might be very slight. They broke a window in a store they picked up for throwing beer cans all over the Boston Common they were generally rowdy in an automobile that sort of thing. Do you feel that newspapers are right in saying we have we have a community that buys our newspapers we want to kill those stories. Now the question of killing stories we don't kill any stories. If it's a police blotter right and we print it nine times out of ten the kind of incidents you're referring to

involve juveniles and their names on available anyway. And so what happens there is that the printing of the police knows provides the public with a pattern of behavior. What's going on in the community. How much vandalism is there is it a serious problem or is it not a serious problem. What is the nature of the problem. If there is an arrest of an adult we print it without exception. I was referring earlier to the second case however because I I would like to get back to that I think the state has put a new condition on this business because in between the time of the first case the second time the state has introduced this system of furloughs and the gradual return of the rehabilitated person to society. That's not a news event. My view. Because you know it's like to be a 24 hour visit or a weekend visit and gradually there is this re involvement into the

community. And I think that's exceptionally healthy. It doesn't provide a news event as of such and such a day the door clanged shut behind so-and-so and he or she is not free again that that isn't happening now. Scott how do you handle such stories. Or is during the conversation several examples came to mind that that I'd like to touch on during the original furlough flap that happened in this state. There were numerous occasions where police chiefs became irate because people were furloughed whom they had arrested. And the people reappeared in the community without any consultation of the police chief in advance of the furlough or any awareness on the part of the police department that these people were being temporarily returned to their community. And if it was it was one of the incidents that that caused the furlough program to be re-examined. But the privacy

people had I believe and I don't mean privacy people as a group but the privacy laws at that time. Denied access to that to the information on the status of that person's position at any given point in time within the criminal justice system. And so their work a great many people who were confused by the. I think that the thing that troubles newspaper people on on the question of the public's needs versus the private rights are in areas that well for instance if. If a series of rapes occur over a period of a month in North Quincy as an example the newspaper is denied access to the information surrounding the rapes. I don't know any newspapers that make a practice of running the names of

rape victims. I think in in this case the concern of newspaper people is it is not over the name of the rape victim. It's it's it's it's a concern over being allowed to make the public aware and specifically the people who live in the community that that's involved that these things that are taking place and informing them of what is taking place so that they can protect themselves to some degree. And so that they have a an honest and factual reckoning of what's taken place since in many cases people are clearly aware that rapes may have taken place and the rumors frequently tend to be worse than the actual facts. But I think that it it does the public a genuine disservice when they are not given information that that relates to their own public safety. And as I come back we're not talking about putting the names of the rape victims but the fact that the rapes happened when they happened where they happen so that people can protect themselves or their children if there's a pattern

involved in this that would allow them to at least be aware that they should take certain precautions. Now this is obviously different in tone our discussion is different in tone in contexts from from a discussion that would have taken place will say seventy five years ago in the heyday of yellow journalism in many cities when the idea was you you went after the story you in some cases even invented the story to boost circulation. What you're really saying then is that the newspaper person or the media person you know looks upon this privacy issue in every story and makes a judgment. He's worried when the police make a judgement to keep facts quiet. He's he's he has to make a judgement. As Bill pointed out whether he will run the story do you. Do you face that all the time do you show me why I won't run this story because I am acting like the police do I have certain criteria that I must follow.

I think any journalism person has has certain responsibilities in looking at the kind of news that the medium that they were associated with. Prince do you have any problems for example at your local level with industries and in large corporations will say or let's say medium sized corporations where you know there is something going on or perhaps you might dig into the story and yet some of the professional magazines like Columbia Journalism Review and more tell us that many a small newspaper keeps away from certain kinds of stories they set up an artificial barrier of privacy between them and the local institution commercial institution because they don't want to upset the applecart they don't mind it if a metropolitan daily comes in and does it but they won't do it.

Well I think we're beyond nice if we let our listeners to believe that we could classify them as they. I think there are many. You know different kinds of approaches to the various problems we're talking about perhaps there are daily newspapers. But isn't this a problem we all need it with a local newspaper or a local newspaper sensitivity to you but sensitive is a problem with all the newspapers and you're dealing with such a pluralistic society that you can hardly print anything without irritating someone. I think you touch an area in which most of us would agree we have the least amount of expertise that is in reporting business news. I don't think there's any question about that now and again there are great exceptions from the Wall Street Journal on down. But I would have to say that the average small daily there are very few people who can approach business know in a way that that I

would consider to be truly professional. They don't understand much about business. Most of the kids coming off college campuses today business is a dirty word. They begin with a negative point of view right off the bat of its business its bad and so what we tend to do I think is to print that business news which sort of comes to the top of the heap and forces itself upon us. There's the good business news of the of the plant coming to town there's the bad business news of the plant leaving town and why. But in between there is perhaps some legitimate news that we just don't go after because we're not aware of what it is in terms of its substance we print labor situations as they arise or what my question was a little different bill I'm not saying that you're not right you're absolutely right but my question was when you know what it is for example let's take big city dailies the Chicago papers kept away from the FTC hearings of Sears-Roebuck about two years ago.

The. The Boy's Town story was not a big story. You know I went to a small paper and went after it. Is this a problem that there is a wall of privacy because you're afraid to grapple with your own hometown power there is that they again I think you've got some specific cases and I wouldn't draw a generalization from but I think other problem in Newburyport I think that there are many newspapers which do tangle with exactly those kinds of problems and I think we we always look at the you know the tough guy on the block that the guy was doing this is a problem in Quincy at all. I'm sure that that there are readers of the newspaper who would say it's a problem because they perceive it to be so. Without At the risk of being accused of changing the subject I think the greater problem as we see it is is is not the the inference that the newspaper is sitting on a story or has bagged it as the the newspaper's efforts

to to get out the arrest of an influential local citizen who was arrested for drunken driving but the police department will not confirm that that there was an accident or that there was an arrest for drunken driving because the police chief doesn't care to release that information either because it might be detrimental to his reappointment or because they like to protect their own people in small towns. Police chiefs are are protective of a great many of the more influential people in towns. And they don't they don't feel comfortable releasing information that the subject of a great deal rumor because most people know something happened that there was an accident. They know whose car was involved in it but the police department will pretend that there was no accident and nothing ever happened. I think that the editor has a public responsibility to see to it that his reporters are instructed to report those matters of public interest fairly thoroughly honestly wherever they might fall. I think

because of the failure of US school systems to do much in the area of business with most of the graduates of liberal arts colleges that find their way in a newspaper offices most business reporting is lousy. Well Bill Plante Scott No I'm not calling 30 on the bottom of this account because we're going to come right back in a moment or two and do next week's program to carry on our discussion for this day this is Bernard Ruben. The eastern Public Radio Network in cooperation with the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University as president of the First Amendment as a free people a weekly examination of civil liberties in the media. In the 1970s the program is produced in the studios of WGBH Boston. This is the eastern Public Radio Network.