Winning One for the Press

The following is an editorial article my father Calvin K. Sunderland wrote in the 1970's. I've edited it a bit so this version only half as long as the original. Sometimes we need to go back to our roots and rediscover our foundations. This article is from my early days in the newspaper field. At the time my dad wrote the following, I was a reporter, photographer, press operator, dark room tech, etc. at the Humboldt Sun newspaper in Winnemucca, Nevada.

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As a reaction to Watergate, a lot of ethics and campaign expenditure legislation was being enacted by many states in the early 70s. The Nevada legislature passed one that was basically okay but contained two provisions with which I disagreed. One would have required every newspaper in the state to submit records to the Secretary of State of how much each candidate for state office spent for advertising. The second required that anyone placing an ad for a candidate must first secure authorization from the candidate before the newspaper could accept the ad.

"I waited weeks for some one or more of the Reno and Las Vegas dailies to challenge the act... a sack full of rattlesnakes for newspapers. None did. About the time I resolved to tackle the job myself I got acquainted with Michael Schaefer, a young libertarian lawyer from Las Vegas. (I don't recall how he and I came to meet, but I'd already become something of a lightning rod for every overcharged political activist in Nevada.) We discussed the new campaign expenditures law and I told him I'd like to challenge it in court, but that I didn't want to spend a lot of money on it.

Mike offered to take it on pro bono publico (for the public good) and wouldn't charge me a nickel. "I'm just setting up practice and this is the kind of thing that should get me some good publicity. Besides, I think it'll be easy to win on constitutional grounds and won't take a lot of my time," he said.

So I forked over $25 in court costs for filing the suit in Las Vegas District Court and in late June, 1974, the case was argued. The state didn't put up much of a fight. In fact, Secretary of State Bill Swackhammer had stopped in after we filed the case to tell me personally how glad he was that someone was challenging. "It would be nothing but grief and trouble for my office," he said, "and I doubt that it's enforceable."

Attorney General Robert List, another of my friends in the administration, told me much the same thing.

List and Swackhammer, as the officials having responsibility to enforce and administer the law, were defendants. Schaefer argued before Judge Joseph Pavilkowski that the spending reporting portion of the law in effect gave police power to a nonstate agency (the newspapers), and that newspapers were singled out among the advertising media (radio, television, billboards, direct mail and the like were exempt).

In regard to the law's requirement that anyone placing an ad for a candidate must first secure authorization from the candidate, Schaefer argued that was a prior restraint of free speech and an abridgement of freedom of the press.

The judge handed down a preliminary injunction against those two provisions. Neither the Attorney General nor the Secretary of State appealed; they'd said beforehand they wouldn't. Those two provisions were repealed in the next legislature.

A country editor had won a round for freedom of the press when no one else had the guts, and the case made headlines throughout the nation.

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Never under estimate the power of small town or county-wide newspapers. When they have the goods on the bad guys & gals in government at any level the power they can wield for good can be amazing. It is time for all of the local newspapers to band together and apply pressure to the federal and state governments to get their act together and properly serve you and I. The best way to do that is threatening to reduce their radically huge salaries. Or we can simply fire them and replace them with someone better.