On printing presses not being “free” either (because you have to buy them) well this is getting into the details. However, it may help to distinguish the funding model. Consider two extreme models:
1) Funding comes from a grant or trust, and is used to buy the press, paper, salaries for journalists, press-operators etc. The funder has no say on what content gets printed (it is up to journalists’/editors’ discretion). Any proceeds from paper sales get paid back into the trust.
This seems like a case of truly free speech (in both senses of free) because no-one is paid to say anything in particular. So the journalists say what they agree with and think is worth saying. It pattern matches to an instance of free speech that we think is worth protecting.
2) Funding comes from a tyrant who owns the whole business, and uses it as a propaganda rag. He orders the journalists to print what he tells them, whether or not they agree with it, whether or not they believe it. If they don’t, they get fired. If they tell anyone what happened, they are sued under non-disclosure agreements.
This doesn’t seem like free speech in either sense (the speakers are being coerced), and doesn’t pattern-match to anything obviously worth protecting.
Cases where the funding comes from advertising look a bit more interesting. An initial pattern-match is that the ads themselves aren’t free speech that we particularly want to protect (outright lies about Snakeoil or distortions about competitor products can be restricted by an advertising standards body). Whereas any news or editorial comment is protected free speech, provided it is cleanly separated from the advertising, and the advertiser doesn’t have any control of its content. If a particular story was run because the advertiser demanded it, that isn’t protected. And so on.
On your other remark about spectrum being a property right: possible, but notice that it is still a massive restriction on free speech (by rights of property now, rather than by legislative censorship). And it shows up some of the problems with broad property rights; seems too similar to making air a property right, with trespass for anyone who breathes it without the owner’s permission.
Please note that “the advertiser doesn’t have any control of its content” doesn’t always hold: advertisers have the power to blackmail editors/newspapers with “if you publish that paper that attacks us, we won’t put advertising in your columns anymore”. They can exert a form of censorship, and induce self-censorship reactions “no, we won’t publish that article about the working conditions in company X, because company X is paying us a lot in advertising and we don’t want to upset them” even without company X having to do any explicit blackmail. This is not an easy problem to solve.
Yes, this is why advertising funding is an “interesting” case and falls between the extremes. One solution is “firewalls” between the department selling advertising space and the editorial team, so that explicit threats of blackmail can’t get through. The paper might need to show evidence of such firewalls to claim protection for pieces which are labelled as comment but look suspiciously-like paid-for advertising.
What is most difficult here is “self-censorship” whereby the editor knows that if he runs a particular story, then the advertising will dry up, and the paper risks going out of business. But this is not in principle different from dilemmas on readership such as “If I run this shocking story about what our troops are up to abroad, then I’ll sound unpatriotic, lose readers, and go out of business”.
There is self-censorship in almost all speech contexts (“If I say that, my friends will think I’m an idiot”, “If I post that, it will get down voted”). But the important point is that what emerges through the self-censorship filter is protected. The intuition here is that we don’t want to impose even more filters.
On printing presses not being “free” either (because you have to buy them) well this is getting into the details. However, it may help to distinguish the funding model. Consider two extreme models:
1) Funding comes from a grant or trust, and is used to buy the press, paper, salaries for journalists, press-operators etc. The funder has no say on what content gets printed (it is up to journalists’/editors’ discretion). Any proceeds from paper sales get paid back into the trust.
This seems like a case of truly free speech (in both senses of free) because no-one is paid to say anything in particular. So the journalists say what they agree with and think is worth saying. It pattern matches to an instance of free speech that we think is worth protecting.
2) Funding comes from a tyrant who owns the whole business, and uses it as a propaganda rag. He orders the journalists to print what he tells them, whether or not they agree with it, whether or not they believe it. If they don’t, they get fired. If they tell anyone what happened, they are sued under non-disclosure agreements.
This doesn’t seem like free speech in either sense (the speakers are being coerced), and doesn’t pattern-match to anything obviously worth protecting.
Cases where the funding comes from advertising look a bit more interesting. An initial pattern-match is that the ads themselves aren’t free speech that we particularly want to protect (outright lies about Snakeoil or distortions about competitor products can be restricted by an advertising standards body). Whereas any news or editorial comment is protected free speech, provided it is cleanly separated from the advertising, and the advertiser doesn’t have any control of its content. If a particular story was run because the advertiser demanded it, that isn’t protected. And so on.
On your other remark about spectrum being a property right: possible, but notice that it is still a massive restriction on free speech (by rights of property now, rather than by legislative censorship). And it shows up some of the problems with broad property rights; seems too similar to making air a property right, with trespass for anyone who breathes it without the owner’s permission.
Please note that “the advertiser doesn’t have any control of its content” doesn’t always hold: advertisers have the power to blackmail editors/newspapers with “if you publish that paper that attacks us, we won’t put advertising in your columns anymore”. They can exert a form of censorship, and induce self-censorship reactions “no, we won’t publish that article about the working conditions in company X, because company X is paying us a lot in advertising and we don’t want to upset them” even without company X having to do any explicit blackmail. This is not an easy problem to solve.
Yes, this is why advertising funding is an “interesting” case and falls between the extremes. One solution is “firewalls” between the department selling advertising space and the editorial team, so that explicit threats of blackmail can’t get through. The paper might need to show evidence of such firewalls to claim protection for pieces which are labelled as comment but look suspiciously-like paid-for advertising.
What is most difficult here is “self-censorship” whereby the editor knows that if he runs a particular story, then the advertising will dry up, and the paper risks going out of business. But this is not in principle different from dilemmas on readership such as “If I run this shocking story about what our troops are up to abroad, then I’ll sound unpatriotic, lose readers, and go out of business”.
There is self-censorship in almost all speech contexts (“If I say that, my friends will think I’m an idiot”, “If I post that, it will get down voted”). But the important point is that what emerges through the self-censorship filter is protected. The intuition here is that we don’t want to impose even more filters.
Or even go one step further: a group of people threaten to boycott companies that advertise on shows saying politically incorrect things.