New York Times Co. v. Sullivan - and the First Amendment it draws upon - applies to everyone, regardless of what corporation they may or may not work for. An unemployed person is protected from defamation claims by public figures under it just fine.
It does not establish any special corporate rights.
Sullivan absolutely establishes corporate rights. Otherwise, Trump could enact a ban on “fake news” and say it applies only to the corporation itself, not the staff. The staff can write whatever they want, but the corporation can’t use its printing presses, etc., to disseminate what the government considers fake news.
> Otherwise, Trump could enact a ban on “fake news” and say it applies only to the corporation itself, not the staff.
That's some really tortured logic.
Such an act would simply be a violation of the First Amendment (and Article I, for that matter). The corporate nature of its target is, again, entirely irrelevant.
Sullivan sets a high standard for defamation claims by public figures. That's it. They protect you saying defamatory things about Hillary Clinton as long as you don't write down "I know this is false and I'm defaming her because I hate her guts" explicitly somewhere.
> The corporate nature of its target is, again, entirely irrelevant.
Why? In New York Times v. Sullivan, the corporation was being sued for what it did. The New York Times reporter didn’t print and distribute all those newspapers. The corporation did that.
And what you’re calling “tortured logic” was in fact the government’s argument in Citizens United. It argued that it wasn’t regulating the filmmaker. It was regulating the corporation spending funds to make and distribute the film. So it sounds like we agree Citizens United was correctly decided!
It simply sets a high standard for proving defamation claims by public figures.