The press is the only commercial enterprise that is explicitly protected by the First Amendment. Both freedom of speech and the press are constitutionally guaranteed. But the press has received little constitutional protection in addition to that provided to other speech.
For the past two years, three colleagues and I have worked on a project at Yale Law School to assess whether freedom of the press has been fulfilled. After reviewing cases throughout U.S. history and conferring at length with journalists, media lawyers, historians and other scholars, our unequivocal conclusion is that it has not. Our report will be released this month.
