April 12 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has apologized to two news reporters in Mississippi who were ordered to erase their audio recordings of his speech at a high school last week.

Scalia has long barred audio and video recording of his speeches. During his speech last Wednesday at a high school in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, a U.S. marshal ordered reporters for the Associated Press and the Hattiesburg American newspaper to erase recordings they were making of the speech, AP reported. The audience hadn't been told not to record the speech, AP said.

``You are correct that the action was not taken at my direction; I was as upset as you were,'' Scalia said in a letter to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which had written to him in protest and released his reply. ``I have written to the reporters involved, extending my apology and undertaking to revise my policy so as to permit recording for use of the print media.''

Scalia, appointed to the nation's highest court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, last month refused to remove himself from a case that will decide whether Vice President Dick Cheney must disclose records from his energy task force. The Sierra Club challenged Scalia's impartiality after he and Cheney went duck hunting together in January.

Supreme Court spokesman Ed Turner said Scalia won't have any further comment on the matter. The court didn't release the letters to the reporters.

After last week's incident in Mississippi, the Reporters Committee, based in Arlington, Virginia, also wrote to Attorney General John Ashcroft and the U.S. Marshals Service, saying the marshal's action violated a federal privacy law that limits government authority to seize materials from the news media.

Marshals Service

Jon Broadbooks, executive editor of the Hattiesburg American, said today his newspaper hadn't yet received a letter from Scalia. The letter to the Reporters Committee was dated Friday, and the committee said in a statement that it received the letter today.

``I'm certainly encouraged by the justice's decision,'' Broadbooks said. ``There's still one remaining overarching issue here, and that is the actions of the U.S. Marshals Service, which we believe violated the law.''

Mavis Dezulovich, a spokeswoman for the Marshals Service, said the agency had received a complaint letter from one of the two news organizations involved in the Hattiesburg episode. The agency is reviewing the letter, she said.

``Once that review process is complete, it will be responded to,'' she said.

In his letter to the Reporters Committee, Scalia, 68, said he doesn't control the marshals' actions and will express his ``preference'' that they not confiscate recordings.

Ron Harrist, AP news editor in Jackson, Mississippi, said his office hadn't received a letter from Scalia.

``We greatly appreciate Justice Scalia's prompt response to our letter,'' Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee, said in the statement. ``However, we remain disappointed with his policy regarding electronic media coverage of his speeches, and hope he will reconsider.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Laurie Asseo in Washington at lasseo1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 12, 2004 16:52 EDT