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What's Missing from This New York Times Editorial?
...I discussed the substantive matter below, but for now let me ask a different question: Where would the arguments in the New York Times editorial leave the New York Times itself? Shouldn't New York Times v. Sullivan (the landmark libel case) and New York Times v. United States (the Pentagon Papers case), for instance, have come out the opposite way under the Times' analysis? The corporation that owns the Times, like all corporations, has "limited liability, special rules for the accumulation of assets and the ability to live forever [in theory]." It is "in a privileged position in producing profits and aggregating wealth." It surely has tremendous "influence." It tries to participate in "politics," in its editorials and also, inevitably (whether intentionally or not) in its news coverage and choices of what to cover. It is a "legally created economic entit[y]."

Now maybe the Times is implicitly suggesting that it's excluded from the analysis because of the proviso that it "is in society’s interest that they are allowed to speak about their products and policies." But the ads in New York Times v. Sullivan and the publication of the Pentagon Papers wasn't speech about its products and policies. The speech was its product, in the sense that it was produced by the Times in part -- not clear whether this was so in the ad in Sullivan but perhaps one might say so -- and it was something that the Times sold. ...

...But in any event, my point here isn't so much the substantive point -- it's that a business corporation is publishing a political message arguing that business corporations shouldn't have the constitutional right to publish political messages, without even (1) mentioning that its argument would apply to itself, and (2) explaining why, despite that, the argument should not apply to itself. (It's clear, after all, from its past statements and arguments in court that the Times does take the view that it indeed should continue to have constitutional rights.)