On the U.S. Constitution: First Amendment

Does the first ammendment of the US Constitution guarantee Americans a free press?

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment01/

According to Blackstone:

"''The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state; but this consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public; to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press: but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequences of his own temerity. To subject the press to the restrictive power of a licenser, as was formerly done, both before and since the Revolution, is to subject all freedom of sentiment to the prejudices of one man, and make him the arbitrary and infallible judge of all controverted points in learning, religion and government. But to punish as the law does at present any dangerous or offensive writings, which, when published, shall on a fair and impartial trial be adjudged of a pernicious tendency, is necessary for the preservation of peace and good order, of government and religion, the only solid foundations of civil liberty. Thus, the will of individuals is still left free: the abuse only of that free will is the object of legal punishment. Neither is any restraint hereby laid upon freedom of thought or inquiry; liberty of private sentiment is still left; the disseminating, or making public, of bad sentiments, destructive to the ends of society, is the crime which society corrects.''"

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment01/06.html#1

Can a corporation consolidation of ownership of the print media be legally established as a "licensed press" and thus violate the First Ammendment of the US Constitution?

I realize that this is unusual thinking, but it appears to me that the Constitutional framers did not have any inkling that corporations would be created and take ownership of the press that they envisioned in their establishment of the First Ammendment.

"Justice Stewart has argued: ''That the First Amendment speaks separately of freedom of speech and freedom of the press is no constitutional accident, but an acknowledgment of the critical role played by the press in American society. The Constitution requires sensitivity to that role, and to the special needs of the press in performing it effectively.'' 32 But as Chief Justice Burger wrote: ''The Court has not yet squarely resolved whether the Press Clause confers upon the 'institutional press' any freedom from government restraint not enjoyed by all others.''"

"To be sure, in all the cases to date that the Supreme Court has resolved, the defendant has been, in some manner, of the press, 40 but the Court's decision that corporations are entitled to assert First Amendment speech guarantees against federal and, through the Fourteenth Amendment, state regulations causes the evaporation of the supposed ''conflict'' between speech clause protection of individuals only and of press clause protection of press corporations as well as of press individuals. 41 The issue, the Court wrote, was not what constitutional rights corporations have but whether the speech which is being restricted is expression that the First Amendment protects because of its societal significance. Because the speech concerned the enunciation of views on the conduct of governmental affairs, it was protected regardless of its source; while the First Amendment protects and fosters individual self- expression as a worthy goal, it also and as important affords the public access to discussion, debate, and the dissemination of information and ideas. Despite Bellotti's emphasis upon the nature of the contested speech being political, it is clear that the same principle, the right of the public to receive information, governs nonpolitical, corporate speech."

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment01/08.html#1

So, in 1978 the SCOTUS has available to them the facts on corporate ownership of the press, and found no issue with that ownership itself in affording a corporation not in the business of press special protections of freedom of speech, despite that prior to this "institutional press" did not enjoy "any freedom from government restraint not enjoyed by all others."


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Remarkably it was a 5 to 4 decision and "Justice Rehnquist would have recognized no protected First Amendment rights of corporations because, as entities entirely the creation of state law, they were not to be accorded rights enjoyed by natural persons."

In my opinion, Rehnquist was correct. History has proven this.
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Interestingly:

"Granting that the number of newspapers had declined over the years, that ownership had become concentrated, and that new entries were prohibitively expensive, the Court agreed with proponents of the law that the problem of newspaper responsibility was a great one. But press responsibility, while desirable, ''is not mandated by the Constitution,'' while freedom is. The compulsion exerted by government on a newspaper to print that which it would not otherwise print, ''a compulsion to publish that which 'reason tells them should not be published,''' runs afoul of the free press clause."

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment01/17.html#7

The judiciary recognized the reduction in number of press, the consolidation of those remaining press, and the rising cost of access to the press for "Governmentally Compelled Right of Reply to Newspapers" in 1974.

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Based on the events that have followed, I would suggest that the decision to accord rights enjoyed by natural persons to corporations not in the business of press was flawed, utterly irresponsible, and without consideration of the ultimate and potential deterioration of the First Ammendment protections of the US Constitution.
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On another matter entirely I found this tidbit:


Notably, Woodrow Wilson, a visionary at the age of 29 years, offered this remark in 1885, approximately 28 years before becoming 28th President of the United States:

http://www.ipl.org/div/potus/wwilson.html

""Unless Congress have and use every means of acquainting itself with the acts and the disposition of the administrative agents of the government, the country must be helpless to learn how it is being served; and unless Congress both scrutinize these things and sift them by every form of discussion, the country must remain in embarrassing, crippling ignorance of the very affairs which it is most important that it should understand and direct. The informing function of Congress should be preferred even to its legislative function. . . . he only really self-governing people is that people which discusses and interrogates its administration." W. Wilson, Congressional Government 303 (1885)."

Thus the informing function and the legislative function were said to be dual roles of Congress and the informing role was said to be paramount to the legislative role.

What was notable then remains notable now: If Congress should fail to perform the informing function on the Executive Branch, then "the country must be helpless to learn how it is being served."

Federal and/or State government cannot interfere (via criminal penalty or imprisonment) with the publication of information to be desseminated to citizens.

However, the Constitution is ambiguous regarding a SELF-REGULATING media that censors itself through direct or indirect pressure or influence of government officials. It could be an interesting case to see if this is a violation as if the government itself controlled the strings. I'm pretty sure that it would be constitutional for a NON-government entity like corporate power to make media bend to its whims as a corporation is a "private citizen" as per the government.