Source: Albuquerque Journal, N.self storageM.Sept. 07--The Santa Fe Reporter says the spokesman for Gov. Susana Martinez has refused to respond to telephone calls and emails because of articles that cast Martinez in an unfavorable light.The spokesman for the Republican governor, Enrique Knell, calls the Reporter a "left-wing weekly tabloid."Such spats between public officials and the news media over stories and coverage are nothing new. Any journalist worth a reporter's notebook has been in at least a few scrapes.The governor of Maine recently joked -- at least I hope he was joking -- about blowing up the offices of a newspaper. The Obama administration invited other TV networks but not Fox News to interview an administration official. South Carolina football coach Steve Spurrier excluded a newspaper reporter from a news conference because of a story. The speaker of the state House in New Hampshire banned reporters from a briefing because of an editorial cartoon.Such clashes between public officials and the media usually get smoothed over at some point. What's unusual about the one between the Reporter and Martinez is that it has ended up in court.In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in state District Court in Santa Fe, the newspaper alleges Martinez is violating the free press provision of the New Mexico Constitution by not responding to Reporter inquiries while responding to inquiries from other media on the same subjects.The lawsuit also accuses the administration of repeatedly violating the state Inspection of Public Records Act by withholding documents requested by the Reporter or stalling in releasing them.Knell says the lawsuit is "baseless."The lawsuit says Knell refused to return any phone calls from the Reporter and responded to only one of its emails in the first seven months of this year.The lawsuit says the treatment of the newspaper is impairing its newsgathering activities and is a prior restraint of its freedom to publish the news.The state Constitution says that, "No law shall be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or of the press."Daniel Yohalem of Santa Fe, a lawyer for the Reporter, says the claim that the governor is violating the constitutional provision by her treatment of the newspaper is a novel one for state courts. (There are laws that guarantee public access to government meetings and records.)The U.S. Supreme Court hasn't ruled that the free-press provision in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the media a right of access to government information. Rulings from lower federal courts are mixed.Federal judges have found that public officials cannot selectively exclude reporters from places where news is disseminated, such as press rooms, news conferences and elsewhere.But federal courts have also found that a journalist doesn't have a right to have equal access to public information sources and to be treated the same as other journalists.The Reporter isn't claiming it has been excluded from news conferences and other events; it is seeking a court order requiring Martinez to provide the Reporter with "the same access to information and comment" as she provides to other news organizations.In 1998, a迷你倉federal appeals court denied a claim by a Baltimore reporter that the city's Police Department had violated her First Amendment rights by denying her access to information and interviews provided to other journalists.The court wrote:"The broad rule for which plaintiff argues would presumably preclude the common and widely accepted practice among politicians of granting an exclusive interview to a particular reporter. And, it would preclude the equally widespread practice of public officials declining to speak to reporters whom they view as untrustworthy because the reporters have previously violated a promise of confidentiality or otherwise distorted their comments."A U.S. District Court in Maryland in 2005 rejected a case brought by two reporters after the governor instructed officials in his administration not to speak to them.The judge wrote:"Although the Constitution establishes the contest between the holders of government information and those seeking access to that information, it does not resolve it. The resolution of the inevitable conflicts between the holders of government information and those seeking access to that information is committed to 'the tug and pull of the political forces in American society.'"The judge added:"A government may lawfully make content-based distinctions in the way it provides press access to information not available to the public generally."In rulings where federal judges have found that reporters cannot be selectively banned from news conferences and other places where news is disseminated, judges have found the media have a limited right of access to government information."A free press is undermined if the access of certain reporters to facts relating to the public's business is limited merely because they advocate a particular viewpoint. This is a dangerous and self-defeating doctrine," a judge wrote in 1973 in a case involving Consumer Reports magazine access to U.S. House press galleries.A federal district judge ruled in 1974 that the mayor of Honolulu could, as a general proposition, decide not to hold news conferences, decline to respond to any question from the media or even select certain reporters for private interviews.But the judge found the mayor couldn't exclude a reporter from a news conference, calling that censorship.The judge wrote:"A free press is not necessarily an angelic press. Newspapers take sides, especially in political contests. Newspaper reporters are not always accurate and objective. They are subject to criticism, and the right of a governmental official to criticize is within First Amendment guarantees."But government, without a compelling reason, cannot use its powers "to intimidate or to discipline the press or one of its members because of what appears in print," the judge said.UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Thom Cole at tcole@ abqjournal.com or 505-992-6280 in Santa Fe. Go to .abqjournal. com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, N.M.) Visit the Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, N.M.) at .abqjournal.com Distributed by MCT Information Services文件倉
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