The Fair Trial-Free Press Controversy - Where We Have Been and Where We Should Be Going

On October 2, 1966, the report of the American Bar Association Advisory Committee on Fair Trial and Free Press was released as a tentative draft. The release culminated twenty months of intensive work by the Committee, its Reporter, and its research staff. Since then, many thousands of copies of the draft in printed form have been distributed to judges, lawyers, schools of law and journalism, and to persons in responsible positions in the press, radio and television whose all important function is to keep the American people informed. The news media and other groups have also completed studies to which I shall refer.

A great and entirely desirable debate has now been under way for a number of months. In the remarks which follow, it is my purpose, speaking for myself alone, but reflecting, I hope, the general sentiment of our Committee, to examine the current posture of the Fair Trial-Free Press issue with some preface to indicate the chronology of events which have contributed to the present debate, and with some recommendations for the future.