[ThrowawayR2]

> "As a matter of law in the United States you are objectively wrong."

You are quite correct, of course. I meant to write "shouldn't" instead of "don't".

> "So what, you think individuals should be able to investigate something all by themselves, but the government should be free to put the boot down on newspapers because they're corporations?"

I'll point out that there's an entirely separate and intentional carve-out for freedom of the press that is distinct from freedom of speech, so that's not a good justification for corporations to get freedom of speech as a right directly.

[xoa]

:\

>I'll point out that there's an entirely separate and intentional carve-out for freedom of the press that is distinct from freedom of speech

Not really as a matter of law we're talking about here. "The press" isn't some special legal entity, there's no licensing for it or anything. Absolutely critical press victories like NYT v. Sullivan were based on freedom of speech protections.

But whatever, so you don't want Mozilla Corporation to be able to advocate for Firefox if the government doesn't want it to because Google managed to lobby successfully? No company can come out in favor gay rights or Pride Day if the government doesn't want them to? You're fine with with the government being able to punish companies for arguing against encryption backdoors? And what about the individuals at those companies, if the CEO speaks about those things is that the company speaking and punishable or is it ok if he says "this is my opinion" first every time? What about employees?

Like, we can go through a million examples here if you want but I don't think it's that hard to see how maybe government might abuse that just a little bit.

[perl4ever]

>"The press" isn't some special legal entity, there's no licensing for it or anything

This is one of those things that's plausible and common enough to read on the internet that it makes me worry about alternate universes intersecting.

If you type "credentialed members of the media" into Google, do you see any results, or is it just me?

Another key phrase I find is "reporter's privilege" relating to state laws to shield the press, which, as you might imagine, requires defining what a reporter is.

"Some privilege schemes are narrow and apply only to full-time employees of professional news outlets, while others are broad and extend to bloggers, filmmakers, freelancers, book authors, and student journalists. In other words, some are inclusive and others are exclusive."

https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/journalists_privil...