> It's fallacious to characterize it as just some ad-hoc "group" of individuals joining together to individually exercise their rights.
Nobody is arguing that the New York Times is some ad-hoc group of individuals; it certainly has its structure. The argument is that the same principles that afford an ad-hoc group of individuals the freedom of association (and expression) is what also affords a structured corporation like the New York Times the same protections. This isn't conjecture, it's the philosophy behind the landmark decisions of New York Times Co vs Sullivan, as well as Citizens United vs FEC (Citizens United was a 501(c)4 non-profit corporation).
At the end of the day, the New York Times doesn't have a mind of its own; the articles it publishes and advertisements it chooses to sell are the output of the individuals that work there, including the journalists and the editors.
If you and I want to join together and start a corporation for the purpose of advancing an issue, the First Amendment prohibits the government from enacting any law that may abridge that.
> And yes, I agree that we don't actually have a free press.
The Supreme Court has an established track record of aggressively protecting the rights of the organized press (NYT v Sullivan, Hustler Magazine v Falwell), group-speech (Citizens United), hate speech (Brandenburg) and even violent speech (Hess v Indiana). If that doesn't register as "press freedom", then I may as well lobby for legislation outlawing comments like yours on account of being misinformation.
> At the end of the day, the New York Times doesn't have a mind of its own; the articles it publishes are the output of the individuals that work there, including the journalists and the editors.
The Chinese room argument says otherwise, and it behooves us as homo sapiens to pay attention. How many individual reporters at the NYT wanted to give support the Iraq war? And yet that's what the entity itself ended up doing, using their contributions.
> Supreme Court has an established track record of aggressively protecting the rights of the organized press
You totally ignored my argument. The point is that most of what constitutes de facto government in the US is actually outside of what we call "the government", and resides in corporations. Hence pointing to Equifax, which explicitly promulgates constraints on our individual behavior, and yet has escaped all sort of democratic accountability.
> The Chinese room argument says otherwise, and it behooves us as homo sapiens to pay attention.
I'm not sure what this sentence means.
> > How many individual reporters at the NYT wanted to give support the Iraq war? And yet that's what the entity itself ended up doing, using their contributions.
I'm sure that individual NYT reporters disagreed with support for the Iraq War; but as a protected association, they are free to determine how they settle internal disagreements however they see fit. Every organization, group, corporation, and association has their set of internal rules, and the Constitution protects those associations specifically as it relates to speech and expression.
> Hence pointing to Equifax, which explicitly promulgates constraints on our individual behavior, and yet has escaped all sort of democratic accountability.
Not sure how Equifax is relevant. First of all, it isn't in the business of publishing speech; that's what we're talking about here. If Equifax wrote a blog post about how it should be free from legislation, it is well within its rights to do that. Second of all, if you're talking about Equifax's business practices, the user has no control over whether they interact with Equifax or not — THAT is the problem with Equifax. That's simply not true for Fox News or CNN or The New York Times where there's a direct relationship between seller and buyer. I'm not sure what Equifax has to do with any of this...
Nobody is arguing that the New York Times is some ad-hoc group of individuals; it certainly has its structure. The argument is that the same principles that afford an ad-hoc group of individuals the freedom of association (and expression) is what also affords a structured corporation like the New York Times the same protections. This isn't conjecture, it's the philosophy behind the landmark decisions of New York Times Co vs Sullivan, as well as Citizens United vs FEC (Citizens United was a 501(c)4 non-profit corporation).
At the end of the day, the New York Times doesn't have a mind of its own; the articles it publishes and advertisements it chooses to sell are the output of the individuals that work there, including the journalists and the editors.
If you and I want to join together and start a corporation for the purpose of advancing an issue, the First Amendment prohibits the government from enacting any law that may abridge that.
> And yes, I agree that we don't actually have a free press.
The Supreme Court has an established track record of aggressively protecting the rights of the organized press (NYT v Sullivan, Hustler Magazine v Falwell), group-speech (Citizens United), hate speech (Brandenburg) and even violent speech (Hess v Indiana). If that doesn't register as "press freedom", then I may as well lobby for legislation outlawing comments like yours on account of being misinformation.