Michael A. Chihak
1443 W. Kandy Court
Tucson, AZ 85745-3805
[email protected] 520 271-1615
IN THE ARIZONA SUPREME COURT
IN THE MATTER OF:
PETITION TO AMEND RULES 122 AND 122.1 OF THE RULES OF THE ARIZONA SUPREME COURT
Supreme Court No. R-26-0003
COMMENT
I, Michael A. Chihak, submit this Comment in opposition to Petition R-26-0003 to change Arizona Supreme Court Rules 122 and 122.1.
1. I am the immediate past Chair of the University of Arizona’s Journalism Advisory Council, which advises and assists the School of Journalism to achieve its mission to prepare students to face the complex challenges confronting journalists in the 21st Century.
2. I know firsthand the importance of a transparent justice system from nearly five decades of work as a reporter, editor and publisher at newspapers, as a news producer and news editor in public broadcasting and as an editor of news websites.
3. As Tucson and Southern Arizona correspondent for The Associated Press in the 1970s, I learned well the importance of access and transparency.
4. I carried that experience throughout my career, as a reporter and line editor at the Tucson Citizen in the early 1980s, an assistant national editor at USA Today in the late 1980s and editor and publisher of the Salinas Californian and the Tucson Citizen from 1992 to 2008. I was a news producer and news director at Arizona Public Media in Tucson from 2010 to 2017.
5. All of those jobs involved covering or overseeing coverage of court proceedings, including trials in state and federal courts. My and my colleagues’ ability to report freely from inside courtrooms and courthouses required justice system transparency and access.
6. My experience tells me the proposed amendments to Arizona Supreme Court Rules 122 and 122.1 are, simply, a bad idea. They would limit public access to the justice system.
7. No judicial system on Earth has the credibility that the U.S. justice system holds. That’s for one reason: transparency.
8. Maintaining public access to government and specifically to the justice system is necessary in our free society. This service is largely provided to the people via the news media practicing their rights under the First Amendment.
9. Any rules, procedures or actions that affect access to the justice system – inside and outside the courtroom – are a threat to transparency and the people’s right to know. That includes the proposals to amend Arizona Supreme Court Rules 122 and 122.1.
10. Requiring journalists and the public to go beyond the current process in Rules 122 and 122.1 to request judges’ permission to use recording equipment, including the proposal to increase the time for advance notice, casts a shadow on journalists’ ability to inform the public about the court system.
11. Requiring journalists and the public to seek the presiding judge’s permission to use recording equipment anywhere in the courthouse would abridge transparency and is impractical and bureaucratic.
12. A minority of Americans – 44% – approve of the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a survey earlier this year. While some of that may be partisan politics, it can also be attributed to the court’s move away from transparency by using the so-called “shadow docket” to decide important issues without full and open hearings.
13. The credibility of the Arizona Supreme Court and the justice system it oversees would be eroded by restricting access to the news media and the public. These proposed amendments represent a big step in the wrong direction.
14. For these reasons, I urge the Court to reject the proposed amendments to Rules 122 and 122.1.
Respectfully submitted this 17th day of April, 2026.
By: /s/ Michael A. Chihak
Michael A. Chihak
1443 W. Kandy Court
Tucson, AZ 85745-3805
[email protected] 520 271-1615