Solicitor General Bork argued the cause for petitioners. 

Joseph A. Califano, Jr., argued the cause for respondents. 

MR. JUSTICE STEWART delivered the opinion of the Court.

The respondents, a major metropolitan newspaper and one of its reporters, initiated this litigation to challenge the constitutionality of  4b(6) of Policy Statement 12201A of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
At the time that the case was in the District Court and the Court of Appeals, this regulation prohibited any personal interviews between newsmen and individually designated federal prison inmates. The Solicitor General has informed the Court that the regulation was recently amended "to permit press interviews at federal prison institutions that can be characterized as minimum security." The general prohibition of press interviews with inmates remains in effect, however, in three-quarters of the federal prisons, i. e., in all medium security and maximum security institutions, including the two institutions involved in this case.

In March 1972, the respondents requested permission from the petitioners, the officials responsible for administering federal prisons, to conduct several interviews with specific inmates in the prisons at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and Danbury, Connecticut. The petitioners denied permission for such interviews on the authority of Policy Statement 12201A. The respondents thereupon commenced this suit to challenge these denials and the regulation on which they were predicated. Their essential contention was that the prohibition of all press interviews with prison inmates abridges the protection that the First Amendment accords the newsgathering activity of a free press....

Except for the limitation in Policy Statement 1220.1A on face-to-face press-inmate interviews, members of the press are accorded substantial access to the federal prisons in order to observe and report the conditions they find there. Indeed, journalists are given access to the prisons and to prison inmates that in significant respects exceeds that afforded to members of the general public. For example, Policy Statement 1220.1A permits press representatives to tour the prisons and to photograph any prison facilities. During such tours a newsman is permitted to conduct brief interviews with any inmates he might encounter. In addition, newsmen and inmates are permitted virtually unlimited written correspondence with each other. Outgoing correspondence from inmates to press representatives is neither censored nor inspected. Incoming mail from press representatives is inspected only for contraband or statements inciting illegal action. Moreover, prison officials are available to the press and are required by Policy Statement 1220.1A to "give all possible assistance" to press representatives "in providing [417 U.S. 843, 848]   background and a specific report" concerning any inmate complaints.   

The respondents have also conceded in their brief that Policy Statement 1220.1A "has been interpreted by the Bureau to permit a newsman to interview a randomly selected group of inmates." As a result, the reporter respondent in this case was permitted to interview a randomly selected group of inmates at the Lewisburg prison. Finally, in light of the constant turnover in the prison population, it is clear that there is always a large group of recently released prisoners who are available to both the press and the general public as a source of information about conditions in the federal prisons.  

Thus, it is clear that Policy Statement 1220.1A is not part of any attempt by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to conceal from the public the conditions prevailing in federal prisons. This limitation on prearranged press interviews with individually designated inmates was motivated by the same disciplinary and administrative considerations that underline 115.071 of the California Department of Corrections Manual, which we considered in Pell v. Procunier. The experience of the Bureau accords with that of the California Department of Corrections and suggests that the interest of the press is often "concentrated on a relatively small number of inmates who, as a result, [become] virtual `public figures' within the prison society and gai[n] a disproportionate degree of notoriety and influence among their fellow inmates." As a result those inmates who are conspicuously publicized because of  their repeated contacts with the press tend to become the source of substantial disciplinary problems that can engulf a large portion of the population at a prison.

The District Court and the Court of Appeals sought to meet this problem by decreeing a selective policy whereby prison officials could deny interviews likely to lead to disciplinary problems. In the expert judgment of the petitioners, however, such a selective policy would spawn serious discipline and morale problems of its own by engendering hostility and resentment among inmates who were refused interview privileges granted to their fellows. The Director of the Bureau testified that "one of the very basic tenets of sound correctional administration" is "to treat all inmates incarcerated in [the] institutions, as far as possible, equally." This expert and professional judgment is, of course, entitled to great deference.

In this case, however, it is unnecessary to engage in any delicate balancing of such penal considerations against the legitimate demands of the First Amendment. For it is apparent that the sole limitation imposed on newsgathering by Policy Statement 1220.1A is no more than a particularized application of the general rule that nobody may enter the prison and designate an inmate whom he would like to visit, unless the prospective visitor is a lawyer, clergyman, relative, or friend of that inmate. This limitation on visitations is justified by what the Court of Appeals acknowledged as "the truism that prisons are institutions where public access is generally limited." In this regard, the Bureau of Prisons visitation policy does not place the press in any less advantageous position than the public generally. Indeed, the total access to federal prisons and prison inmates that the Bureau of Prisons accords to the press far surpasses that available to other members of the public. 

We find this case constitutionally indistinguishable from Pell v. Procunier, and thus fully controlled by the holding in that case. "[N]ewsmen have no constitutional right of access to prisons or their inmates beyond that afforded the general public." The proposition "that the Constitution imposes upon government the affirmative duty to make available to journalists sources of information not available to members of the public generally . . . finds no support in the words of the Constitution or in any decision of this Court." Thus, since Policy Statement 1220.1A "does not deny the press access to sources of information available to members of the general public," we hold that it does not abridge the freedom that the First Amendment guarantees. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed and the case is remanded to the District Court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

The Court today upholds the authority of the Bureau of Prisons to promulgate and enforce an absolute ban against personal interviews of prison inmates by representatives of the news media. In my view the interview ban impermissibly burdens First Amendment freedoms.... 

The specific issue in this case is the constitutionality of the Bureau's ban against prisoner-press interviews. That policy is set forth in  4b (6) of the Policy Statement:

"Press representatives will not be permitted to interview individual inmates. This rule shall apply even where the inmate requests or seeks an interview. However, a conversation may be permitted with inmates whose identity is not to be made public, if it is limited to the discussion of institutional facilities, programs and activities."

The Bureau's prohibition against press interviews is absolute in nature. It applies without regard to the record and characteristics of the particular inmate involved, the purpose of the interview, or the conditions then prevailing at the institution in question. At the time of the decisions of the District Court and the Court of Appeals, the interview ban applied with equal rigor to every correctional facility administered by the Bureau, community treatment centers as well as major penitentiaries. By letter dated April 16, 1974, the Solicitor General informed us that the Bureau subsequently modified its policy to exempt minimum security facilities from the absolute prohibition of press interviews. This change affects approximately one-quarter of the inmate population of the federal prisons. For the remainder, the Bureau intends to continue its established policy....

The District Court received testimony on this point from six knowledgeable persons. All agreed that personal interviews are crucial to effective reporting in the prison context. A newsman depends on interviews in much the same way that a trial attorney relies on cross-examination. Only in face-to-face discussion can a reporter put a question to an inmate and respond to his answer with an immediate follow-up question. Only in an interview can the reporter pursue a particular line of inquiry to a satisfactory resolution or confront an inmate with discrepancies or apparent inconsistencies in his story. Without a personal interview a reporter is often at a loss to determine the honesty of his informant or the accuracy of the information received. This is particularly true in the prison environment, where the sources of information are unlikely to be well known to newsmen or to have established any independent basis for assessing credibility. Consequently, ethical newsmen are reluctant to publish a story without an opportunity through face-to-face discussion to evaluate the veracity and reliability of its source. Those who do publish without interviews are likely to print inaccurate, incomplete, and sometimes jaundiced news items. The detailed testimony on this point led the District Court to find as a fact that the absolute interview ban precludes accurate and effective reporting on prison conditions and inmate grievances.

The District Court also found that the alternative avenues of prisoner-press communication allowed by the Policy Statement, whether considered singly or in aggregation, are insufficient to compensate for the prohibition of personal interviews. For the reasons stated above, correspondence is decidedly inferior to face-to-face discussion as a means of obtaining reliable information about prison conditions and inmate grievances. In addition, the prevalence of functional illiteracy among the inmate population poses a serious difficulty; many prisoners are simply incapable of communicating effectively in writing.

Random conversations during supervised tours of prison facilities are also no substitute for personal interviews with designated inmates....T

On the basis of this and other evidence, the District Court found that personal interviews are essential to accurate and effective reporting in the prison environment.... The Government does not seriously attack this conclusion. Instead, it contends that the effect of the Bureau's interview ban on prisoner-press communications raises no claim of constitutional dimensions. It is to that question that I now turn.

Respondents assert a constitutional right to gather news. In the language of the Court of Appeals, they claim a right of access by the press to newsworthy events. However characterized, the gist of the argument is that the constitutional guarantee of a free press may be rendered ineffective by excessive restraints on access to information and therefore that the Government may not enforce such restrictions absent some substantial justification for doing so. In other words, respondents contend that the First Amendment protects both the dissemination of news and the antecedent activity of obtaining the information that becomes news.

The Court rejects this claim on the ground that "newsmen have no constitutional right of access to prisons or their inmates beyond that afforded the general public." It is said that First Amendment protections for newsgathering by the press reach only so far as the opportunities available for the ordinary citizen to have access to the source of news. Because the Bureau of Prisons does not specifically discriminate against the news media, its absolute prohibition of prisoner-press interviews is not susceptible to constitutional attack. In the Court's view, this is true despite the factual showing that the interview ban precludes effective reporting on prison conditions and inmate grievances. From all that appears in the Court's opinion, one would think that any governmental restriction on access to information, no matter how severe, would be constitutionally acceptable to the majority so long as it does not single out the media for special disabilities not applicable to the public at large.

I agree, of course, that neither any news organization nor reporters as individuals have constitutional rights superior to those enjoyed by ordinary citizens. The guarantees of the First Amendment broadly secure the rights of every citizen; they do not create special privileges for particular groups or individuals. For me, at least, it is clear that persons who become journalists acquire thereby no special immunity from governmental regulation. To this extent I agree with the majority. But I cannot follow the Court in concluding that any governmental restriction on press access to information, so long as it is nondiscriminatory, falls outside the purview of First Amendment concern.

The Court principally relies on two precedents. In Zemel v. Rusk, 381 U.S. 1 (1965), the Court rejected a United States citizen's contention that he had a First Amendment right to visit Cuba in order to inform himself of the conditions there. The more recent authority is Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665 (1972), where we considered the assertion by newsmen of a qualified First Amendment right to refuse to reveal their confidential sources or the information obtained from them to grand juries. The Court rejected this claim, primarily on the ground that the largely speculative public interest "in possible future news about crime from undisclosed, unverified sources" could not override the competing interest "in pursuing and prosecuting those crimes reported to the press by informants and in thus deterring the commission of such crimes in the future." 

Relying on these precedents, the majority apparently concludes that nondiscriminatory restrictions on press access to information are constitutionally irrelevant. Neither Zemel nor Branzburg warrants so broad a reading. In Zemel the Court rejected the asserted First Amendment right to visit Cuba on the ground that the governmental restriction on trips to that country was "an inhibition of action" rather than a restraint of speech. However appropriate to the context of that case, this distinction could not have been intended as an all-embracing test for determining which governmental regulations implicate First Amendment freedoms and which do not.... 

Nor does Branzburg v. Hayes, supra, compel the majority's resolution of this case. It is true, of course, that the Branzburg decision rejected an argument grounded in the assertion of a First Amendment right to gather news and that the opinion contains language which, when read in isolation, may be read to support the majority's view. Taken in its entirety, however, Branzburg does not endorse so sweeping a rejection of First Amendment challenges to restraints on access to news. The Court did not hold that the government is wholly free to restrict press access to newsworthy information. To the contrary, we recognized explicitly that the constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press does extend to some of the antecedent activities that make the right to publish meaningful: "Nor is it suggested that news gathering does not qualify for First Amendment protection; without some protection for seeking out the news, freedom of the press could be eviscerated." We later reiterated this point by noting that "news gathering is not without its First Amendment protections . . . ."  And I emphasized the limited nature of the Branzburg holding in my concurring opinion: "The Court does not hold that newsmen, subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury, are without constitutional rights with respect to the gathering of news or in safeguarding their sources." In addition to these explicit statements, a fair reading of the majority's analysis in Branzburg makes plain that the result hinged on an assessment of the competing societal interests involved in that case rather than on any determination that First Amendment freedoms were not implicated. 

In sum, neither Zemel nor Branzburg presents a barrier to independent consideration of respondents' constitutional attack on the interview ban. Those precedents arose in contexts far removed from that of the instant case, and in my view neither controls here. To the extent that Zemel and Branzburg speak to the issue before us, they reflect no more than a sensible disinclination to follow the right-to-access argument as far as dry logic might extend.... But to my mind it is equally impermissible to conclude that no governmental inhibition of press access to newsworthy information warrants constitutional scrutiny. At some point official restraints on access to news sources, even though not directed solely at the press, may so undermine the function of the First Amendment that it is both appropriate and necessary to require the government to justify such regulations in terms more compelling than discretionary authority and administrative convenience. It is worth repeating our admonition in Branzburg that "without some protection for seeking out the news, freedom of the press could be eviscerated." 

The specific issue here is whether the Bureau's prohibition of prisoner-press interviews gives rise to a claim of constitutional dimensions. The interview ban is categorical in nature. Its consequence is to preclude accurate and effective reporting on prison conditions and inmate grievances. These subjects are not privileged or confidential. The Government has no legitimate interest in preventing newsmen from obtaining the information that they may learn through personal interviews or from reporting their findings to the public. Quite to the contrary, federal prisons are public institutions. The administration of these institutions, the effectiveness of their rehabilitative programs, the conditions of confinement that they maintain, and the experiences of the individuals incarcerated therein are all matters of legitimate societal interest and concern. Respondents do not assert a right to force disclosure of confidential information or to invade in any way the decision making processes of governmental officials. Neither do they seek to question any inmate who does not wish to be interviewed. They only seek to be free of an exceptionless prohibition against a method of newsgathering that is essential to effective reporting in the prison context.

I believe that this sweeping prohibition of prisoner-press interviews substantially impairs a core value of the First Amendment. Some years ago, Professor Chafee pointed out that the guarantee of freedom of speech and press protects two kinds of interests: "There is an individual interest, the need of many men to express their opinions on matters vital to them if life is to be worth living, and a social interest in the attainment of truth, so that the country may not only adopt the wisest course of action but carry it out in the wisest way."  In its usual application - as a bar to governmental restraints on speech or publication - the First Amendment protects important values of individual expression and personal self-fulfillment. But where as here, the Government imposes neither a penalty on speech nor any sanction against publication, these individualistic values of the First Amendment are not directly implicated.

What is at stake here is the societal function of the First Amendment in preserving free public discussion of governmental affairs. No aspect of that constitutional guarantee is more rightly treasured than its protection of the ability of our people through free and open debate to consider and resolve their own destiny. As the Solicitor General made the point, "[t]he First Amendment is one of the vital bulwarks of our national commitment to intelligent self-government."  It embodies our Nation's commitment to popular self-determination and our abiding faith that the surest course for developing sound national policy lies in a free exchange of views on public issues. And public debate must not only be unfettered; it must also be informed.... 

Because I believe that the ban against prisoner-press interviews significantly impinges on First Amendment freedoms, I must consider whether the Government has met its heavy burden of justification for that policy.... "First, the regulation or practice in question must further an important or substantial governmental interest unrelated to the suppression of expression. . . . Second, the limitation of First Amendment freedoms must be no greater than is necessary or essential to the protection of the particular governmental interest involved...." 

This survey of prevailing practices reinforces the conclusion that the Bureau's prohibition of all prisoner-press interviews is not necessary to the protection of the legitimate governmental interests at stake....

While I agree with the District Court and the Court of Appeals that the First Amendment requires the Bureau to abandon its absolute ban against press interviews, I do not believe that it compels the adoption of a policy of ad hoc balancing of the competing interests involved in each request for an interview....

Thus, the Bureau could meet its obligation under the First Amendment and protect its legitimate concern for effective penal administration by rules drawn to serve both purposes without undertaking to make an individual evaluation of every interview request. Certainly the Bureau may enforce reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions for press interviews. Such regulations already govern interviews of inmates by attorneys, clergymen, relatives, and friends. Their application to newsmen would present no great problems. To avoid media creation of "big wheels," the Bureau may limit the number of interviews of any given inmate within a specified time period. To minimize the adverse consequences of publicity concerning existing "big wheels," the Bureau may refuse to allow any interviews of a prisoner under temporary disciplinary sanction such as solitary confinement. And, of course, prison administrators should be empowered to suspend all press interviews during periods of institutional emergency. Such regulations would enable the Bureau to safeguard its legitimate interests without incurring the risks associated with administration of a wholly ad hoc interview policy....

The Court's resolution of this case has the virtue of simplicity. Because the Bureau's interview ban does not restrict speech or prohibit publication or impose on the press any special disability, it is not susceptible to constitutional attack. This analysis delineates the outer boundaries of First Amendment concerns with unambiguous clarity. It obviates any need to enter the thicket of a particular factual context in order to determine the effect on First Amendment values of a nondiscriminatory restraint on press access to information. As attractive as this approach may appear, I cannot join it. I believe that we must look behind bright-line generalities, however sound they may seem in the abstract, and seek the meaning of First Amendment guarantees in light of the underlying realities of a particular environment. Indeed, if we are to preserve First Amendment values amid the complexities of a changing society, we can do no less.

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