Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn

The Supreme Court decision in Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn effectively nullified the Georgia statute, but the issue was far from settled. "[T]he reality 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 the Times and other news sources had not obtained the name through open public records.