[foldr]

>Relying on a commercial sector seems like odd. Why can't individuals have those rights too? Does having a printer make someone more deserving of rights? I would think not, in an age where anyone with a smartphone can reach a sizable audience, but I'm also clearly the crazy American in this thread.

Where are you getting the idea that newspapers in the UK have rights that individuals don't?

[Kalium]

Parent said that newspapers counterbalance the potential to use libel law to silence people. This suggests to me that publishers have de facto protections and rights that individuals do not.

I would love to learn that I have been badly misinformed, and it is in no way true that infamously flexible UK libel law is not mostly defended against with a well-funded legal department.

[foldr]

You’ve certainly been misinformed if you think that there is some kind of special free speech protection in the UK that applies only to publishers.

I don’t know of any country in the world where having money and resources doesn’t confer all kinds of advantages. It wouldn’t be difficult to come up with a list of fundamental rights which de facto aren’t available poor people in the USA. (Just think of all the people jailed under plea bargains because they couldn’t afford proper legal advice. Plea bargains aren’t a thing in the UK.)

Certainly, you are better able to defend against a libel action if you have a lot of money. But in fact private individuals would rarely be sued for libel unless they were rich, as it otherwise wouldn’t be worth it. The libel laws (which I’m not a fan of) have the largest chilling effect on small to medium sized publications, not on individuals.

[Kalium]

Thank you!

You've also made an excellent case for why explicit freedoms are valuable in addition to free speech.