Balasubramani has a post up about the relationship between commentators (in the press) and the government - the kernel here is that government is an interested party and therefore can't be trusted as an impartial arbiter of truth in the public sphere.
What interests me about this notion, which apparently has some currency in American law, is that corporations also have interests, and those interests may also poison the movement of information to the public. How is it that corporations are trusted with this responsibility when the government is not? How did the right to freedom of speech extend beyond the individual to the corporation? And on the other side of the coin, how can the government legitimately regulate the media, given the argument above?
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