Word: courtly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Most journalists would not yet agree with Allen Neuharth, head of the Gannett newspaper chain, that in this respect, the Supreme Court has moved "above the law." But the trend is clear and alarming, from the denial of confidentiality of sources to surprise newsroom searches (see LAW). Not only the press is affected. The search decision can send the cops into psychiatrists' or lawyers' offices as well. The latest court ruling that pretrial hearings and possibly trials themselves may be closed to press and public is reprehensible, among other reasons because it could lead to collusion-behind closed...
...monstrous regiment of lawyers has rarely been more resented. In a recent Harris poll about public confidence in various institutions, law firms ranked eleventh on a list of 13. Even when lawyers are miraculously transformed into judges, they do not regain total trust. In the same poll, the Supreme Court came in sixth, while TV news (somewhat surprisingly) ranked first and the press in general ranked fifth, thus nosing ahead of the august court...
...recent court actions really make much of a difference to journalists in practice? Many judges doubt it, but let them try an experiment and take on a tough reporting assignment. Let them try to get complicated and controversial information from resisting sources and amid conflicting claims - without the judicial power to subpoena documents or witnesses - and have to testify under the disciplines of contempt or perjury. Let these judges then see how far they will get with their assignment if they are unable to promise an informant, who may be risking his job, assured confidentiality, or if they...
...what journalists will not and must not be. Obviously the American journalist enjoys unusual latitude and he must, therefore, bear unusual responsibility. He must expect a certain rough-and-tumble in his trade, and not wrap himself in the Constitution at every setback. By no means were all recent court rulings unmitigated disasters. The court in effect allows the press to print anything it can get its hands on. When the Supreme Court held that a newsman's state of mind and his preparations for a story were legitimate subjects of inquiry, this evoked visions of thought police...
...that "if Americans are not sylvan cohabitors, they are at least riparian." On Dr. William Carlos Williams, who Ober believes had a block against rewriting: "As a doctor, Williams may have buried his mistakes; as a poet, he published them." On the importance of wit and libertinism at the court of Charles II: "Men rose by their levity and women by their willingness to comply with the law of gravity, shortly to be discovered...