That outlook may work for CBS and The Washington Post, but how about the smaller news organizations who have to contend with high insurance premiums and the threat of utter bankruptcy? Do you think that the specter of multi-mill, a dollar law suits will, in practice, chill them?

Unfortunately, yes.

Looking at the string of libel suits that have attracted so much attention of late, and most recently, the Washington Post case, do you think the courts have encroached on the freedom of the press in their dispensation of those cares?

I believe that Judge [Pierre N.] Leval--who incidentally runs a first class courtroom--should ever have permitted [the Westmoreland] case to go trial. He as much as acknowledged that himself after Westmoreland withdrew his suit by saying, "Perhaps this is a verdict best left to history."

Surely, public figures have access to newspapers, magazines, television. Let the public decide. Let the court of public opinion decide.

It is unnecessary, it seems to me, to go to the immensely draining process of libel litigation. And when I use the word draining, I'm talking about time, effort, emotion, money.

You said the Westmoreland case never should have gone to trial--

Summary judgment should have been granted by the judge, in my estimation, before it went to trial.

Because it was such a clearcut case?

Exactly--as was proved under oath in that courtroom. And the depositions of both sides were available to the judge prior to its going to trial.

Trying to get at a definition of libel, taking a look at the New York Times v. Sullivan case, do you think there is a valid distinction between the rights of public officials and the rights of private citizens?

Yes. Public officials are simply representatives, many of them, of government. And if we don't have the opportunity, the right, to criticize government without the fear of invasive and disabling libel suits, then where are we?

If that rule prevails, and if public officials are subjected to the most intense, unrestrained media scrutiny, do you think a lot of people will be scared out of government service?

Yes. I think that it is bound to make public service less attractive to certain individuals. But the press is surely no more robust today it has been in this country's history in the candor of its attacks on misfeasance or malfeasance in public office?

To what extent has the advent of television increased the media's capacity to scrutinize and intrude on the lives of public servants?