Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn

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 local tabloid published her name after a foreign newspaper had done so, under the lurid headline "Kennedy Rape Gal Exposed." Soon, the New York Times and a number of other media outlets were publishing her name in their accounts of 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 a rape victim. Some argued that such laws belonged to the past, and to shield victims' identities only further reinforced stereotypes about the crime itself as 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 likely to 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 step forward if they felt a law shielded them, that they would not become part of a sensationalized media event as the woman who had accused Kennedy had become. Writing in Editor & Publisher, Bruce S. Ticker opposed any such ban, theorizing, "if lawmakers can prohibit the media from making one fact public, could this open the door to more official censorship . . . It would be no 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 disclosure of victims' identities in the media, part of the Crime Victims Protection Act, was also challenged in court on constitutional grounds.