Does Dick Cheney's decision to talk to a "friendly" news agency (Fox) about his hunting accident have constitutional dimensions?

...some Democrats and competing broadcasters charged that Cheney chose to speak only with Fox News because of a perception that the cable channel is sympathetic to the Republican administration. They called for the vice president to hold a news conference with the rest of the media.

"Now that he feels forced to talk, he wants to restrict the discussion to a friendly news outlet, guaranteeing no hard questions from the press corps," Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said in a statement.

On CNN, commentator Jack Cafferty called the interview "a little bit like Bonnie interviewing Clyde. ... I mean, running over there to the Fox network -- talk about seeking a safe haven."

Considering that his daughter's sexuality became fair game in the last election, I really can't blame Cheney for giving the media wide berth. But is there any legal obligation on the part of public officials to talk to the media? One can argue that there is morally, but legally?

Constitutionally?

In a recent column restating the obvious, Thomas Sowell takes an old-fashioned view of the Constitution:

There is nothing in the Constitution or the laws that says that the media have a right to be in the White House at all, much less to have press conferences.

I need to play the Devil's Advocate occasionally, but I'm having trouble with this one, because the First Amendment imposes no duty upon anyone to speak to the press, nor does it impose any duty on the press to speak to anyone, or to be fair or balanced; it only restrains Congress from abridging free speech or freedom of the press.

The right to report events or comment on them does not include any right to make anyone talk. While there is a right of access to public information, that is not a special right possessed by members of the press corps, and in theory, I have just as much right to ask Dick Cheney about his hunting accident as does CNN, and Cheney has just as much right to blow me off as he does CNN.

There is no First Amendment right to be told anything by anyone. The remedy against recalcitrance, evasion, or nondisclosure by officeholders is to find the information elsewhere and publish it, criticize the people who withheld it, and (ultimately) vote them out of office.

Cheney has as much right to talk only to Fox News as he does to talk to no one. That doesn't mean it's a good idea politically, but I think some people are confusing the First Amendment with the issue of accountability.

The First Amendment is there to protect free speech, not guarantee accountability.

If anything, there's a certain tension between free speech and accountability, as claims involving the latter are often used as a covert tool of silencing speech which would otherwise be off limits to government censorship. Accountability can be infinitely more complex than the simple right to speak one's mind freely. In the case of a politician, what he says can be controlled by the constant threat of losing his office. Admittedly, this doesn't loom large as a threat to Dick Cheney, as he'll probably never run for another public office, and while I may be wrong, I seriously doubt that this hunting accident flap will have much of an effect on the Republican Party as a whole.

Accountability is another ill-defined concept, and it can take various forms. As an accounting term, it's fine. But as a political term, "accountability" means as many things are there are people to define it. Obviously, a high elected official like Dick Cheney is held to a higher standard of political accountability than someone who is unelected. A media figure like NBC's David Gregory is not held to the same standard, because he is not elected. As Dan Rather and Howell Raines showed, even the highest media figures can be fired. But as Bill O'Reilly argued about bloggers, they "work for no one" and thus "can't be fired." (Ironically, I suspect that Bill O'Reilly would have been less likely to answer emails from me than I would from him, despite his pronouncements about accountability.)

In a political context, the word "unaccountable" is often used to indicate a refusal meet various demands, which often have nothing to do with real accountability, but simply politics. The AFA and GLAAD would probably each call the other unaccountable; all it would mean is that they don't answer each other's claims or engage in serious dialogue.

In the blogosphere, not talking about something after being told that you are to talk about it can lead to a charge of "unaccountability." I'm still trying to figure out the standard for commenters these days. If you don't have them, you're censoring people. If you do have them you're responsible for them if you're LGF (but not, apparently, if you're Atrios). If, however, you're silent in the face of comments that disagree with you, you're not being accountable!

Fortunately for me, I'm not running for anything, I can't be fired, and I'm not important enough to be "held accountable." (And as to comments, a post I wrote about the Danish cartoons has now drawn well over 300, and I don't have time to read them all, much less agree or disagree with them. One thing is sure: there's no accounting for comments.)

Once again, here are my, um, standards:

IN THE INTERESTS OF FULL DISCLOSURE, I think I should make the following points clear:

1. To all liberals who dislike my thoughts and want to resort to accusatory ad hominem attacks: I hereby disclose that I am a conservative with a hidden agenda.

2. To all conservatives who dislike my thoughts and want to resort to accusatory ad hominem attacks: I hereby disclose that I am a liberal with a hidden agenda.

3. Anyone who disagrees with any cause I support can feel free to consider me a "lobbyist" working on its behalf -- whether in secret or openly! I confess!

How much fuller can my disclosure get than that?

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I refuse to say whether Dick Cheney paid me to write this post!