Reply #60: your hypothetical: it would be perfectly within the paper's first amendment rights [View All]

As the supreme court has made clear, "a responsible press is an undoubtedly desirable goal, but press responsibility is not mandated by the Constitution and like many other virtues it cannot be legislated" and "he choice of material to go into a newspaper...and treatment of public issues and public officials - whether fair or unfair - constitute the exercise of editorial control and judgment" and thus, the first amendment bars the government from "compelling editors or publishers to publish that which reason' tells them should not be published."

Or as Potter Stewart, joined by William O Douglas (one of the greatest defenders of the first amendment to ever serve on the supreme court) once wrote: no government agency - local, state, or federal - can tell a newspaper in advance what it can print and what it cannot.