Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn

Appellant
Cox Broadcasting Corp.
Appellee
Martin Cohn
Appellant's Claim
That a television station, newspaper, or other media outlet has the right tomake public the name of a crime victim, if it was obtained through standard access to public documents.
Chief Lawyer for Appellant
Kirk McAlpin
Chief Lawyer for Appellee
Stephen A. Land
Justices for the Court
Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Jr., Warren E. Burger, William O. Douglas, Thurgood Marshall, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., Potter Stewart, Byron R. White(writing for the Court)
Justices Dissenting
William H. Rehnquist
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
3 March 1975
Decision
Struck down the Georgia statute that permitted the late victim's parent to sue for damages.
Significance
This 1975 ruling settled a case involving a Georgia law that banned news organizations from publishing, airing or otherwise making known the names of victims of sexual assault in conjunction with reporting the crime's prosecution.The High Court determined the law was unconstitutional, in violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing freedom of the press; italso found it in conflict with the terms of the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing the privileges of citizens. With this ruling the Court was tacitly indicating that an ordinary citizen (as opposed to a public figure) has little protection from intrusions by the media under certain circumstances. More significantly, though the High Court struck down a Georgia law that was essentially a holdover from an archaic era designed to protect victims of sexual assault. Several years later there would be a call to revive such statutes after awell-publicized rape case incited a national debate about the naming of victims in the press.
The Circumstances
In 1971 a 17-year--old Georgia high school student named Cynthia Leslie Cohndied of suffocation after being sexually assaulted by six teenaged boys in Sandy Springs. Because of the shocking nature of the crime, intense media coverage was given to the criminal proceedings. When five of the defendants went to trial in April of 1972, Atlanta television station WSB-TV assigned Thomas Wassell to cover the trial. During a court recess, Wassell approached the court clerk, asked to see the indictment against the defendants, and was handed the documents, "in open court," as Wassell noted in his testimony. "Moreover,no attempt was made by the clerk or anyone else to withhold the name and identity of the victim from me or anyone else and the said indictments apparentlywere available for public inspection upon request." Later that night, on theWSB evening news, Cohn's identity was made public.
In May of 1972, the deceased victim's father, Martin Cohn, brought suit against WSB and its owner, the Cox Broadcasting Corp. At the time, a Georgia law existed that made it a misdemeanor to broadcast or print the name of a rape victim. Other states, mostly in the South, also shielded victims of sexual assault through similar statutes, but most news organizations followed their owncode of conduct and did not print or broadcast such information. This was indeference to the trauma the victim had already undergone--with the underlyingassumption that to make the victim's identity known might further stigmatizeher, and to do so in print or on television served no purpose other than sensationalism.
In his suit against Cox, Martin Cohn claimed that when WSB aired his murdereddaughter's name, his family's right to privacy was violated. He requested criminal prosecution of the company on misdemeanor charges and the awarding ofdamages in compensation for the ensuing emotional trauma. A trial court ruledin Cohn's favor, but postponed the damages segment of the case until a jurytrial at a later date. Lawyers for Cox Broadcasting appealed the decision, but the Georgia Supreme Court upheld lower court's decision. In turn, Cox Broadcasting brought legal action challenging the law. It petitioned the U. S. Supreme Court to review the legality of the Georgia statute. The case was arguedbefore the High Court in November of 1974, and the decision was rendered on3 March 1975.
At Issue: Privacy
The Supreme Court's acceptance of the case to the docket signified a new willingness to examine issues involving privacy and the media. There were severalprior decisions applicable in the Cox case. One involved what is known in legal circles as the "Sullivan Standard." In a 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision on libel, New York Times v. Sullivan, the Court asserted thata public person could not claim damages from a media organization for a unflattering news story--unless the plaintiff could first prove it was false, andthat the newspaper knew it was false or acted in reckless disregard for the truth. In the Cox case, Martin Cohn could not dispute the fact that Wassell, on behalf of WSB, had reported something that was "false," in this casethe name of his daughter. Furthermore, the gleaning of Cynthia Cohn's name did not occur under deceptive or otherwise illegal pretenses.
At Issue: Censorship
The crux of the arguments presented by Cox Broadcasting's attorneys involvedthe right to make the details of criminal proceedings known to the public. Itwas, of course, permissible for the press to report on just such governmentproceedings--in the 1947 Craig v. Harney decision, Justice William O.Douglas wrote in his opinion that "a trial is a public event. What transpiresin the court room is public property." Wassell had learned Cohn's name wheninspecting the indictment at the trial court for his story. The indictment was part of the public record, and because it was a public document it was indeed information that any citizen might obtain by going to the prosecutor's offices and requesting to inspect it.
Furthermore, the Supreme Court--as with many of the judicial bodies in the United States--usually backed away from restricting the freedom of the press incases not involving libel. The First Amendment, guaranteeing news organizations the right to report on matters of public interest without fear of censorship, was a near-sacrosanct element of the democratic traditions of the UnitedStates. According to some legal analysts, to restrict or otherwise punish the media for reporting truthful information (as the Georgia statute did) wouldincur what was called the "chilling effect." This referred to self-censorship or journalistic timidity should any legal constraint bind the media.This, in turn, would diminish the press's crucial role in a democratic society as a disseminator of information.
The Court's Decision
In a 6-1 vote, the High Court overturned the Georgia law that prohibited newsoutlets from broadcasting or printing the name of a rape victim, deeming ita violation of the First Amendment. Furthermore, it also held that a suit fordamages on the basis of invasion of privacy--which Cohn had requested--in this case was not applicable. In his opinion, Justice White wrote that states may not impose laws that interfere with freedom of the press, and that court proceedings, moreover, were an especially protected area of public record. Noting that press coverage of trials was an integral part of the judicial system's fairness, White asserted that he and the other justices

are reluctant to embark on a course that would make public records generally available to the media but forbid their publication if offensive to the sensibilities of the supposed reasonable man. Such a rule would make it very difficult for the media to inform citizens about the public business and yet stay withinthe law . . . Once true information is disclosed in public court documents open to public inspection, the press cannot be sanctioned for publishing it. In this instance as in others reliance must rest upon the judgment of those who decide what to publish or broadcast.

The only dissenting vote in the opinion was from Justice Rehnquist, who wrotethat the High Court did not have jurisdiction over the case, in part becausethe damages suit had not yet made it to court.
Impact
The Supreme Court decision in Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn effectively nullified the Georgia statute, but the issue was far from settled. "[T]hereality of the law," wrote Martin Arnold in the New York Times a few days after the ruling, "is such that lawyers who defended newspapers in privacy cases will now bring appeals based on the broader words of the ruling, hoping finally to inch the Court toward absolutely guaranteeing the press the right to print whatever information it wants."
Ironically, the New York Times considered the standard-bearer of American journalism, achieved infamy for doing just that in 1991, when it published the name of a rape victim in a highly-publicized trial. This incited a national debate on what became known as the "identity-disclosure" issue. Though there had been great strides in victims' rights legislation since the Cox decision, in 1991 it was still standard media practice to keep the names of victims of sexual assault private. This incident launched a court case in which the Cox decision was cited, but it was not entirely applicable since theTimes and other news sources had not obtained the name through open public records.
I'm Not A Blue Blob. I'm A Person.
In the spring of 1991 a member of the Kennedy political family, William Kennedy Smith was accused of sexual assault in Palm Beach, Florida. When the criminal case came to trial later that year, television coverage of the proceedings initially obscured the female victim's face with a blue blob. Then, a localtabloid published her name after a foreign newspaper had done so, under thelurid headline "Kennedy Rape Gal Exposed." Soon, the New York Times and a number of other media outlets were publishing her name in their accountsof the case; in one article the Times sketched an account of her less-than-storybook life under the headline "Leap Up Social Ladder for Woman in Rape Inquiry." The paper also used the opportunity to disclose many unsavory details about the victim's character, insinuating that she was perhaps less a victim of rape than a publicity-seeking "perpetrator." Then the accuser appeared on a nationally broadcast news magazine to discuss the situation, which left her further open to criticism.
In the case of the Florida tabloid paper that first mentioned the victim's name in the Kennedy trial, that state overturned a law still on the books, as the Georgia one had been, that made it a misdemeanor to publish the name of arape victim. Some argued that such laws belonged to the past, and to shield victims' identities only further reinforced stereotypes about the crime itselfas well as the perceived stigmatization of such victims by society at large.However, in light of the media coverage of the Kennedy trial, many women were of a different opinion. A 1992 survey by the National Victim Center found that 68 percent of 4,000 women polled said that "victims would be less likelyto report rapes if they felt their names would be disclosed by the news media"--in other words, perhaps more women who were victims of assault would stepforward if they felt a law shielded them, that they would not become part ofa sensationalized media event as the woman who had accused Kennedy had become. Writing in Editor & Publisher, Bruce S. Ticker opposed any suchban, theorizing, "if lawmakers can prohibit the media from making one fact public, could this open the door to more official censorship . . . It would beno surprise if some authorities used a ban to deny reporters unrelated information, some of which even victims-rights advocates might want published to raise awareness about rape." A 1995 Florida law that prohibited the disclosureof victims' identities in the media, part of the Crime Victims Protection Act, was also challenged in court on constitutional grounds.
Related Cases

• Craig v. Harney, 331 U.S. 367 (1947).
  
• New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964).

Pro and Con: Publishing Crime Victims' Names
Controversies arise about the publication of a crime victim's name in the print and broadcast media every day.
State laws may prohibit the publication of crime victims' names as a means ofprotecting individual privacy. They may address print and broadcast media. Astatute may even allow for sanctions against the offending party if the lawis violated. Individuals seeking redress under such statutes assert a violation of their privacy rights.
The First and Fourteenth Amendment, however, prevent the imposition of such restrictions and fines when the information has been obtained from public records, for example, from court proceedings. As with other issues regarding themaintenance of a spirited press, the Supreme Court supports publication of information obtained from public records, over individuals' privacy rights.
Sources
Findlaw. http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/supreme.html
New Bedford Rape Trial
On 6 March 1983, a gang rape took place in Big Dan's Tavern in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The resulting trial convicted four men of aggravated rape, spurring national debate as to whether a woman's independent or compromising behavior made her partially responsible for sexual crimes committed against her.
The aggravated rape of a 21-year-old mother of two had some questioning why the woman was in the bar in the first place. She had been the only female in the establishment, consuming three drinks and flirting. Two men forcibly rapedher on the pool table, two others had attempted to force the woman into oralsex, while two other men were acquitted of cheering and restraining the bartender.
The case attracted national interest of women's groups supporting the victim,while others rallied behind the defendants asserting that the woman should have been at home in the first place. Characterized by Susan Brownmiller, author of the landmark book Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, as a "public morality play," the trial was broadcast live on CNN, discussed in op-edpages and homes across America, and monitored daily by both the Coalition Against Sexist Violence and the Committee for Justice (founded to support the accused).
Sources
Knappman, Edward W., ed. Great American Trials. Detroit, MI: Visible Ink Press, 1994.