I think people are a bit confused about this whole public forum thing.
Let’s say a town has a meeting hall and it allows citizens to reserve the hall for events. The town can’t say: We are going to let the Young Republicans have a meeting there, but not the Young Democrats or the Young Socialists. It can say “we don’t allow meetings to run past 10PM” and “we don’t allow meetings on the weekends”, but it can’t say “we don’t allow meetings during the holy month of Ramadan, but it’s OK on any Christian or Jewish holiday to hold meetings there”.
The town might also use the meeting hall for town business, and it can limit the scope of discussion. If the town is holding a public hearing on whether or not to put a new stop sign at the corner of First and Main, it can tell participants that they are not to bring up the issue about expanding the parking lot behind the town hall or that they can’t bring up the issue of whether or not Obama was born in Kenya. This meeting is about the stop sign at First and Main.
I agree with all of this. However, I think the analogous argument is that if the town wants a stop sign at First and Main, it cannot allow only those speakers in favor of the sign and exclude those who do not think there is a need for it.
Yes, you can exclude speakers who are unruly, those who make threats, those who are not properly dressed, those who do not wait in line to speak, etc., but the rule cannot be that only those in favor of the government position are allowed to speak.
Freedom of the Press is the freedom to print one’s opinion for public consumption. It does not grant you access to a President or any anyone else for questioning. It does not entitle you to an answer from the President or anyone else. Forcing people to answer questions is the stuff of dictatorships.
But if the president or any other official decides to have a forum/meeting/conference where they invite members of the press, those events cannot be used to arbitrarily exclude some without valid criteria. Valid criteria, as previously discussed, could be anything from size or prestige of the organization represented, to audience size etc. - but NOT based on dislike of the press’s point of view. That is using public funds to suppress the freedom of the press.
Mind you, when the president participates in a forum arranged and financed by his party or election campaign, rather than the government, then anything goes except discrimination based on a protected category - race, creed, sex, etc.
Whether the CNN reporter was loud to the point of disrespectful is an interesting question. It’s the nature of the forum that multiple reporters yell questions at once of varying volume, and it often seems the loudest and most repetitive wins; the CNN reporter was fairly noticeable during this event and they were studiously ignored. I guess it depends on your point of view whether she was obnoxiously intrusive or whether the questions were simply too close to home.
You keep saying stuff like this, but you don’t give any cites. There are distinct legal definition for terms such as “public forum”, “nonpublic forum” and “government speech”. You seem to be using the terms in the vernacular, which isn’t the way to make a legal argument. I’d like to see a SCOTUS decision that said the “prestige of an organization” had to be taken into account whenever the president decides to meet with the press.
For local government this is less true. Many municipalities have an “open meetings” law, that prohibits public officials from having secret meetings about “matters of public interest.” It usually only applies to the elected officials, so technically in many cases if the mayor and a member of city council has a private lunch (which is Kosher), there are conversations they ought not have for risk of running afoul of the open meetings law.
There’s nothing quite like that for the President, though.
This is actually the point of law that’s not clear–what we do know is the President can indeed pick and choose which questions he answers for political purposes, can choose to ignore/not call on questioners from outlets he doesn’t like, can give private 1 on 1 access to only reporters from Fox News but not from CNN. I do think that the Supreme Court would ultimately rule he can choose to have whichever members of press he wants present at press conferences, but no definitive ruling on it has ever been issued.
Generally it’s the government that gets to decide if someone has behaved such that they need removed from government property.
Here, we disagree about how to interpret the facts. Questions the press asks are speech. Press questions are a public comment on what topics the press secretary/president/administration member should address. We learn a lot from tough questions that the speaker either dodges or answers evasively. The question is undoubtedly speech. You seem to disagree.
If press briefings and press conferences were solely about the government blasting information out the public, the role of the press could be replaced by a static camera at the front of the room with no one in attendance. The press would be happy with this arrangement since showing up would basically be a waste of time (unless you love the coffee). Instead, press conferences are designed to allow the members of the press to have input on what topics are discussed or clarified by members of the administration.
The government speech doctrine applies to the government’s answers. The questions the press ask are not government speech.
But all the jurisprudence points in the same direction: the government can’t discriminate against people on the basis of their viewpoint. You seem to say that they can and you have no citations to support that.
Actually, I said it’s a limited public forum but even if it’s a non-public forum, the answer is still the same. The government can’t discriminate in granting access to a nonpublic forum on the basis of a person’s viewpoints. I provided a cite. You have not provided a cite for your position.
Any citations for the idea that questions aren’t speech?
You are right. This system has worked well enough in the past because administrations have historically respected press freedom well enough to treat news outlets with differing viewpoints fairly enough that no one has needed to question whether this is really a constitutionally sound way to determine whose questions get answered (or even asked). I don’t think this one incident involving the CNN reporter is enough to call this simple system into question but if some administration were to choose to answer questions only from Fox News and Breitbart because they are the only ones asking friendly questions, I think other members of the press could assert that the question picking process is being used to commit viewpoint discrimination and must be replaced.
No, they are participating in a limited or designated forum. I have never called it a public forum and you are not engaging with the legal status of limited forums. Furthermore, you are not engaging with the fact that viewpoint discrimination by the government is prohibited even in private forums.
Each time you bring up the idea that questions aren’t speech, I’m going to ask for a cite.
True, which is why it is especially important that the opportunity to ask questions be allocated legally and not based on discrimination between the questioners’ viewpoints. Also, I’m sure everyone engaged in this thread understands that press briefings are not like showing up at the DMV where everybody gets their question answered if they wait long enough.
No, we are left with a designated forum or a nonpublic forum where the government seems to be committing illegal viewpoint discrimination in violation of the rights of members of the press. Public forums are not the only place where first amendment rights are protected.
I agree that the administration can’t be forced to answer questions asked by the press. People can infer what they want when the administration refuses to answer certain questions.
There are times when the public is allowed to ask questions and government officials must, in a sense, answer them. Government agencies are required to solicit public comment on rule changes under the Administrative Procedures Act. In This is a chance for the public to ask, “Why don’t you change the rule to do this?” Government officials must consider the rulemaking record including the public comments before adopting the rule. That is, regulators must answer the public in some fashion, although not necessarily in the way that commenters want. If the government comment process were to exclude certain commenters based on the commenters’ viewpoints, it would violate the commenters’ first amendment rights.
I agree that the president and administration officials are under no obligation to open themselves up to interrogation by the press. When they do so, they create a special forum in which they cannot discriminate based on people’s viewpoints.
This isn’t about the president acting as a political operative; it is about whether the president or press secretary is unconstitutionally discriminating against members of the press based on their viewpoints.
I agree that a prohibition on shouting questions repetitively out of turn is a content-neutral regulation that could be imposed on press in the briefing.
It’s not clear to me based on the OP’s question what exactly “annoy[ed]” the president. If the ban was sincerely about yelling or disruptive behavior, and if rules against yelling or disruptive behavior are fairly applied to all members of the press regardless of their viewpoints, then that is a perfectly valid reason to exclude the CNN reporter from a subsequent press briefing. However, if the allegations of “inappropriate” questions and “shouting” were pretexts to exclude a reporter based on her viewpoints, that would be illegal.
Presidents and Mayors aren’t the same and the supreme court historically doesn’t treat them the same. There’s been lots of rulings giving expansive deference to executive prerogative in our lifetime.
The press has no guarantee to speak at these functions and there is no obligation by the government to answer. After the function, the press can write whatever they want.
That’s a rather vague claim, though. There is nothing there that says the president can’t kick someone out of a press conference for whatever reason.
Has that ever been applied to the president in that type of situation? That is, is there existing case law to support the claim of illegality, or is it just your opinion that if someone brought a 1st amendment suit against the president in that type of situation, he or she would prevail in the SCOTUS?