"I never thought about threatening companies as a free-speech issue that courts would get involved with."

"Let me give you an example. If you had told me four years ago that the White House press secretary had got up and said, 'I have a message from President Trump. If CNN airs one more criticism of me, I am going to try and block its next merger,' I would’ve imagined that there would be a lot of outrage about that. What I could not have imagined was a judge releasing an injunction saying that people who worked for President Trump were not allowed to pass on the President’s message from the White House podium. It would be an issue for voters to decide. Or, I suppose, CNN, during the merger decision, could raise the issue and say, 'See, we didn’t get fair treatment because of what President Trump said,' and courts could take that into account. But the idea of blocking the White House press secretary from saying anything seems inconceivable to me."

The New Yorker's Isaac Chotiner says, interviewing lawprof Genevieve Lakier, in "The Evolving Free-Speech Battle Between Social Media and the Government/A recent court ruling dramatically curtailed the federal bureaucracy’s ability to communicate with Internet platforms. What’s at stake when free speech harms the public?"

I like that Chotiner makes the hypothetical about Trump. The facts in the actual litigation are about the Biden administration, and one can expect New Yorker readers to lean toward approving of whatever Biden's people saw fit to do. So it's good to flip the facts.

Lakier says:

"Is the legal standard for libel outdated? Sarah Palin could help answer. Her lawsuit against the New York Times will hinge on an earlier case. Some critics think it’s time for a new rule."

Headline at The Washington Post for an op-ed by University of Chicago lawprof Genevieve Lakier:

It’s rather strange that such a heated debate is raging over the 'actual malice” standard. These words, now a lodestar of constitutional law, almost didn’t make it into [New York Times v.] Sullivan at all. None of the litigants in that case argued for such a rule, nor was there much debate about it during oral argument. Justice William Brennan, who wrote the opinion in the case, claimed that his clerks came up with it in chambers. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a rule fashioned on the fly, there really is much to criticize about it.... 

Lakier puts a link on "clerks," and it goes to a law review article that says, "In later years, Justice Brennan would recall that his clerks discovered the opinion’s 'actual malice' language, but in fact, it was contained in Herbert Wechsler’s brief." Wechsler argued the case for the New York Times.

Lakier's conclusion calls the "actual malice" standard "an accident of history":

The rule is an icon of American constitutional law and unique in the common-law world. It’s an emblem of American free-speech exceptionalism and a source of pride. But it’s also, to some extent, an accident of history. We need not let Sullivan limit our imagination of how First Amendment law could better serve the public interest in a vastly different media environment from the one in which the decision was handed down.

As a writer in this "vastly different media environment," I think New York Times v. Sullivan is more valuable than ever. Go ahead ahead and exercise your "imagination" over how First Amendment law could "better serve" your idea of "the public interest," but the Supreme Court needs to keep the iconic precedent that we have relied on for so long.