Commentary for KQED "Perspectives"

CDC Ban on News Interviews and Confidential Media Mail

by Marty Kassman

(Aired July 8, 1996)

Imagine, for a moment, a government agency that's eating up a big share of your tax dollars. An agency that insists it needs more money, more buildings, more employees every year -- and gets them. And imagine that this agency announces it won't allow the news media to talk with the people you've entrusted to its care, except in very limited circumstances, because the agency doesn't want its institutions to be, quote, "undermined," close quote, by bad publicity.

If that's hard for you to imagine, let me introduce you to the wondrous world of the California Department of Corrections. The CDC is the agency that runs our state prisons. The CDC has grown tired of pesky reporters who insist on getting more than the official government version of what goes on in those prisons.

So the CDC has written a couple of new rules. One of them would do away with the confidentiality of mail sent by inmates to reporters. Prison officials would be able to open those letters and read them before they go out. Once that change is made, how many inmates do you suppose will write to the media about prison practices that are corrupt or wasteful or inhumane? The CDC says the reason for the change is to prevent inmates from getting the media's unwitting help in planning escapes. I kid you not.

The other new rule prohibits reporters from conducting face-to-face interviews with inmates chosen by the reporters. Prison officials say they want to protect the feelings of crime victims who don't like seeing the perpetrators on television. I can understand those emotions, but in this country, the remedy for a person who finds a TV interview offensive is to turn it off, not to have the government construct rules to deprive the entire viewing public of the interview.

If these rules become permanent, the result will be less public scrutiny of the huge, secretive and expensive government agency called the Department of Corrections. Violations of prisoners' already limited rights, and misuses of taxpayers' money, will go unreported. And I think that's a crime. With a Perspective, I'm Marty Kassman.

© Martin Kassman 1996