The constitutionally protected "freedom of the press" is simply the "freedom of speech." Nothing more or less.
It is a protected activity, not a protected class of citizen. Neither is it an elevated authority, prerogative or exemption from the rule of law.
If a reporter corners you on the street, plying you with questions, the reporter is just a Joe Shmo like any other, with no power, no office, no legal prerogative, to make you pay him so much as enough attention to burp at him.
The very same "freedom of speech" that extrapolates logically to the "freedom of the press" (i.e., the freedom to publish your "speech") is OUR freedom, collectively, no more and no less than that of the putative "fourth estate." It is the freedom to speak, to write, to post, to comment, to find out by every legal means, to reveal and expose. No reporter or journalist enjoys any greater or lesser freedom by dint of his/her profession than we all do in that respect.
Law-enforcements agencies, judges, legislatures all enjoy special powers of subpoena, arrest, incarceration. There are times when journalists seem delusionally to believe their "power of the press" approaches that kind of coercive power, as if "I'm a reporter!" means "So you HAVE to answer me!" It's an utter delusion.
Freedom of speech works both ways: the freedom to say what you want and the freedom to say absolutely nothing when you want, and say it (i.e., nothing) to anybody you want. Interestingly, that freedom even encompasses those who've actually been lawfully arrested and charged with crimes: the freedom to be silent.
Isn't it ironic how the very freedom we insist upon for those accused of real crimes seems at times to be completely forgotten when the "mob" clamors for this or that person to 'fess up, to answer questions, to intimately reveal what they have done, felt, thought, wanted, intended, all of course fueled by the profit-motive as the news-entertainment-industry pushes the scandal du jour to keep the ratings up? Yes, quite ironic. Mass mania fueled by mass amnesia: "Rights? What rights? The public has a right to know!"
As I said above, the "freedom of the press" is a protected activity, not a protected class of citizen. In our suddenly cyber-transformed, social-media-pervaded world the meaning of that freedom, the freedom of that ACTIVITY, takes on more significance, and need of crystal-clear definition, than EVER BEFORE. Because, in fact, we are all, all of us who comment, post, react, discuss, debate, argue, now engaged in that very same activity, i.e., "the press," the printed word, and fall under that constitutionally protected freedom as much as anybody calling themselves "reporters/journalists" ever did.
The Founding Fathers couldn't have anticipated our computer age and social media. Which is why it's so astonishing how the broad principle of freedom that they enshrined in the constitution so well encompasses the "press" that we have all, to some extent, now become.
Press on.
