Request By:
Mr. Richard Forester
Chief Photographer
News Center 27
Winchester Road
Lexington, Kentucky 40505
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Your question relates to KRS 432.570, as amended by S.B. 264 [Ch. 435, 1978 Acts, § 1], which legislation deals with the lawful and unlawful possession of radios capable of monitoring police frequencies.
In Lexington on any given day the private automobiles of reporters and photographers are called into use by their employers for the purpose of covering local police and fire traffic, and Kentucky State Police traffic. Your specific question is whether or not the use of police scanners in the "private automobiles" owned by official or professional members of the news media is legal under the statute in question. (Emphasis added).
KRS 432.570(4)(c) permits the possession of a radio capable of receiving police radio transmissions only by newspaper reporters and photographers. As we concluded in OAG 78-384, it is our opinion that the phrase "newspaper reporters and photographers" is broad enough to include all professional and working reporters and photographers of the news media, using a scanner in a mobile unit.
It is our opinion that under the literal language of KRS 432.570(4)(c), such scanners [capable of radio reception only] may lawfully be possessed and used in the private motor vehicles of reporters and photographers of the news media, provided that such use and possession are effected only for the news medium by whom they are each employed. There is nothing in KRS 432.570(4)(c) which suggests that the use of such equipment is limited to media owned vehicles. If the legislature had so intended, it could have so easily inserted into the statute an explicit restriction to that effect. The court has written that it is their duty to accord the words of a statute their literal meaning unless to do so would lead to an absurd or wholly unreasonable conclusion. Department of Revenue v. Greyhound Corporation, Ky., 321 S.W.2d 60 (1959) 61. With that rule as a measuring stick, we do not believe our conclusion leads to an absurd or wholly unreasonable conclusion.