666
OCTOBER TERM, 1997
Syllabus
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the eighth circuit
No. 96-779. Argued October 8, 1997—Decided May 18, 1998
Petitioner Arkansas Educational Television Commission (AETC), a state-owned public television broadcaster, sponsored a debate between the major party candidates for the 1992 election in Arkansas' Third Congressional District. When AETC denied the request of respondent Forbes, an independent candidate with little popular support, for permission to participate in the debate, Forbes filed this suit, claiming, inter alia, that he was entitled to participate under the First Amendment. The jury made express findings that Forbes' exclusion had not been influenced by political pressure or disagreement with his views. The District Court entered judgment for AETC. The Eighth Circuit reversed, holding that the debate was a public forum to which all ballot-qualified candidates had a presumptive right of access. Applying strict scrutiny, the court determined that AETC's assessment of Forbes' "political viability" was neither a compelling nor a narrowly tailored reason for excluding him.
Held: AETC's exclusion of Forbes from the debate was consistent with the First Amendment. Pp. 672-683.
(a) Unlike most other public television programs, candidate debates are subject to scrutiny under this Court's public forum doctrine. Having first arisen in the context of streets and parks, the doctrine should not be extended in a mechanical way to the different context of television broadcasting. Broad rights of access for outside speakers would be antithetical, as a general rule, to the editorial discretion that broadcasters must exercise to fulfill their journalistic purpose and statutory obligations. For two reasons, however, candidate debates present the narrow exception to the rule. First, unlike AETC's other broadcasts, the debate was by design a forum for candidates' political speech. Consistent with the long tradition of such debates, AETC's implicit representation was that the views expressed were those of the candidates, not its own. The debate's very purpose was to allow the expression of those views with minimal intrusion by the broadcaster. Second, candidate debates are of exceptional significance in the electoral process. Deliberation on candidates' positions and qualifications is integral to our system of government, and electoral speech may have its most pro-
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