Sunlight, said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, is the best
disinfectant. This is, in entirety, the ultimate Justification for a free
and unfettered press. Where the light shines, truth grows.

For two years, the California Department of Corrections has barred the
press from conducting any personal interviews with any of its inmates in
the state's prisons. What little information that has come from the
nation's largest penal system a system that spends more each year than is
spent on the state's schools has come from Corrections mouthpieces or
those of the prisoners. By definition, this is all hearsay. Hearsay is
reduced to rumor and rumor always tramples truth.

The issue is not that prisoners should be allowed O.J. type press
conferences but rather the principle of reasonable access by the media to
original sources. It is exactly the same argument made in behalf of open
meetings, open records and open government.

The Department of Corrections, in promulgating its nomedia rule, claimed
that media interviews merely glamorized prisoners. We have searched our
files for the past several years and have failed to find any stories that
"glamorized" prisoners who were not already notorious before they went inside.

Admittedly, the database is small. In the entire prison system, only an
average of seven requests for interviews are made every year. Almost all
inmates have no story to tell except for excuse and rationale. But it is
the exception that has always justified the First Amendment.

It is also a measure of the department's own specious reasoning that it
instituted its new rules in secrecy. If the department had a credible
argument for banning media access, It would not have needed the cover of
"Classified."

The department also claimed that any accurate information the media needed
about prisons could come from its public relations people. And any accurate
information about Watergate, of course, came from Nixon flack Ron Nessen.
Not too long ago, an inmate was shot by a guard because, according to the
Department of Corrections press release, the convict "had refused to obey
the numerous orders of the yard officer." Some time afterwards, the
department admitted that the release and the facts it contained were
wrong.

Again, the issue is not whether prisoners get a hearing, but whether any
government agency has a right to unilaterally censor the First Amendment.

The state Legislature, in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote, has passed
SB434 to overrule the Department of Corrections. The bill, sponsored by the
Society of Professional Journalists and carried by state Sen. Quentin Kopp,
Independent San Francisco, also has the support of the California
Correctional Peace Officers. They believe that interviews with prisoners
will reveal the truth about inmates and the conditions under which guards
must work. Indeed, even the most cynical con cannot stand up to the
skeptical grilling of an equally hardnosed reporter.

The bill's sponsors met Gov. Wilson'd two reservations. Prison officials
will still set the rules for time and access and certainly may prohibit
interviews if there is any threat to the safety of the institution and the
people in it. And the bill is specifically excluded from the Prisoner's
Bill of Rights; thus keeping the media independent from inmate grievances,
as it should be.

We urge Gov. Wilson to sign this bill. The public cannot participate in
informed debate about California's prisons without all the information it
can reasonably get about those prisons. As Harry S Truman said: "Secrecy
and a free, democratic government don't mix."