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PRESS PASSES MAY HELP YOU GET IN
Police and government agency guidelines may also establish procedures for obtaining press credentials facilitating access to certain places closed to the public. Such passes usually do not guarantee access to a place. They merely provide a means of identifying yourself as a journalist who should be admitted if members of the media are to be admitted. If a police department or government agency has established a press pass system, it cannot decide arbitrarily who will receive passes and who will not. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington (D.C. Cir.) held that if an agency establishes a policy of admitting the media, even though the public is barred, media access "cannot be denied arbitrarily or for less than compelling reasons." The panel also ruled that agencies must publish the standards that will be used in deciding whether an applicant is eligible to receive a press pass. It said the agency must provide journalists who are denied press passes with reasons for the denial and opportunities to appeal. (Sherrill v. Knight) In subsequent cases, courts have denied press passes to reporters with criminal records and to reporters and photographers who do not regularly cover a certain beat. Many police department guidelines stress that journalists may use press credentials only when they are on "legitimate" newsgathering assignments. In September 1996, the Department of Defense began to require press pass applicants to answer a questionnaire and undergo a background check as a condition of accreditation to cover the Pentagon. The questionnaire required applicants to list their relatives and to provide information regarding their residence and employment history for the previous seven years, financial backgrounds, criminal and substance abuse histories and other personal data. In December, after the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press wrote a letter protesting the new policy, the department modified the questionnaire, eliminating virtually all of the intrusive questions. One way that a government agency may attempt to discriminate in issuing press credentials is by limiting the definition of the term "journalist." Most often, such regulations refer to individuals "employed by" a news organization. In this way, they may exclude freelance writers and journalists. For example, the State Department's credentialing regulations require that the journalist be a "bona fide, full-time media correspondent based permanently and residing in the Washington D.C." area, and that the applicant and the media organization for which he or she works "have regular and substantial assignments in connection with" the institution. (22 CFR § 9b.1) However, courts have recognized that granting favorable treatment to certain members of the media may be contrary to the First Amendment, because it allows the government to influence the type of substantive media coverage that public events will receive. (Anderson v. Cryovac, Inc.) Therefore, courts have said that one medium is entitled to the same right of access as any other. (Savage v. Pacific Gas and Electric Co.) But in an apparent move to limit media coverage based specifically on its controversial nature, the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the spring of 1997 proposed more restrictive standards governing journalists' access to aliens in detention facilities. The proposed guidelines permit the INS to deny media access to a detainee if he or she is "the center of a controversy" and to discourage the use of names, identifiable photos and voice recordings. Final rules had not been released as of October 1997. (Draft INS Detention Standards) The constitutionality of restrictions will also depend on the nature of the body restricting access. Private organizations holding events on private property can restrict access with little review by the courts. Public bodies are subject to the limits mentioned above, as are quasi-public organizations to which public functions have been delegated. In 1973 the federal District Court in Washington, D.C. found that a refusal by the Periodical Press Galleries to permit the magazine Consumer Reports access to the galleries was a violation of the First Amendment, as well as of the publication's right to equal protection and due process under the law. Although it is a private association of journalists, the organization was given official control of access to the galleries by Congress. The court held that the gallery implemented "arbitrary and unnecessary regulations with a view to excluding from news sources representatives of publications whose ownership or ideas they consider objectionable." Such a content-based restriction was deemed unconstitutional. (Consumers Union v. Periodical Correspondents' Ass'n) "Cyberspace" journalists: The emergence of Internet-based publications raises new issues as journalists who represent them experience difficulty obtaining credentials. A Web journalist who was denied membership to the Periodical Correspondents' Association, a prerequisite for access to the Press Galleries of the Congress, in 1996 filed an unsuccessful lawsuit in federal District Court in Washington, D.C. to challenge the distinction drawn between traditional and "new media" journalists. The Executive Committee of the association, which makes credentialing decisions and whose members are elected by member journalists, denied the reporter's application because it determined that he was not a full-time journalist, his news service is not published for profit, and he does not receive a salary from his publication. Noting that he had been given a fair hearing before the association, the court held that the issue was a "nonjusticiable political question" that it did not have jurisdiction to review. (Schreibman v. Holmes) There is some evidence that new media journalists are gaining acceptance. After the suit against the association, but before the judge rendered a decision in his case, the Executive Committee adopted guidelines recognizing the "emergence of electronic publications as a legitimate extension of the print tradition" and said it would issue credentials to reporters from online publications that meet the same criteria as reporters from print publications. In the two months since the policy change, four electronic publications were given credentials.
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