This article first appeared on March 6, 2025 in Complete Colorado.

In a recent Complete Colorado column, Ari Armstrong rightly criticized Colorado Senate Bill 77 for expanding the special privileges Colorado law gives to professional journalists.

Specifically, SB 77 would restrict most citizens’ rights to public records, while retaining rights for members of the credentialed mass media, or what the bill refers to as “newspersons.”

Colorado law already grants privileges to “newspersons” not extended to the rest of us. Section 13-90-119 of Colorado Revised Statutes is entitled “Privilege for newsperson.” It allows reporters and other media operatives to withhold the names of sources from disclosure during judicial proceedings. This is commonly called a “shield law,” and, of course, ordinary mortals don’t enjoy that privilege.

Professional media claim other advantages, too. The Associated Press (AP) is now suing the Trump administration for revoking its special access to White House events. Again, most of us—even those of us working in media—do not have that privilege.

The establishment media justify their privileges as promoting “freedom of the press.” As explained below, however, special privileges do not promote “freedom of the press” as the First Amendment employs that term. Quite the contrary.

The Background

Freedom of the press and freedom of speech are among the six rights listed in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. When the Amendment was ratified in 1791, the contours of each right already were defined by common understanding and rules of law.

The defining difference between “speech” and “the press” was this: “Speech” meant in-person communication, including oratory. “The press” referred to communication through a medium. In 1791, the medium was print. But modern electronic media also qualify as “the press.” (This is a point on which the Supreme Court remains confused; the justices often refer to broadcasts as “speech.”)

The scope of the First Amendment’s speech and press rights, as originally understood, differed somewhat. One reason is that “speech” is more ephemeral: Oral communication dissipates once spoken, but communication through a medium can be preserved and impact events far and wide. The other reason is that in “speech” the speaker’s identity generally is known. But “freedom of the press” as the American Founders understood it, includes the right of communicating anonymously.

Yet in most ways the originally-understood scope of the speech and press rights were similar. Both protected political, commercial, and artistic expression. Neither protected treason, sedition (provoking mass violence), defamation, or certain forms of pornography.

Most important, both rights were highly democratic: Anyone could exercise them, not just “newspersons.”

The newspaper owner who publishes an editorial exercises freedom of the press. But so does a citizen who self-publishes a pamphlet, a flyer, leaflet, poster, or (today) posts on a blog. A reporter writing a newspaper story exercises freedom of the press. But so does a person who relates news in a circular letter or (today) on social media.

When the First Amendment was adopted, it was considered at least as important for ordinary citizens to enjoy freedom of the press as for professional “newspersons” to do so.

Jean-Louis De Lolme was a Swiss lawyer and the author of a book on the English Constitution consulted by the American Founders. In fact, one of De Lolme’s passages may have been the origin for the opening words of our Constitution, “We the People.”

De Lolme discussed freedom of the press in great detail. Its value, he said, lay in that it enabled ordinary citizens to call government officials to account.

This was a widely shared view. The author of a 1767 essay celebrated freedom of the press because by exercising it, “a simple individual who hath not a means of access to the great, may start a thought, which, if seconded by the power and wisdom of an able and honest statesman, may be productive of general good.”

Another writer contended that press freedom was crucial to self-government and to good government, because through it even “the Cobler in his Stall” could participate in public life by pointing out problems and suggesting solutions that might not otherwise come to the attention of the great and powerful. A 1789 essay in Town and Country Magazine also touted the democratic nature of freedom of the press:

“By this mode of address to the understanding and the judgment of his fellow-citizens, an unknown author may act the splendid part in which the Grecian orators, and even the Roman emperors, were ambitious to shine; and an anonymous pamphlet may open the eyes of the nation.”

Note: “An unknown author.” Not CBS or the New York Times.

Modern Applications

These sentiments are over 200 years old. But they help us understand the scope of freedom of the press and why we have it: It is not exclusively, or even primarily, for “newspersons.”

And those sentiments are particularly relevant today. Knowledgeable critics have long suspected that the established national media relate to the Washington, D.C., political/bureaucratic oligarchy less as a watchdog than as a lapdog. And recent developments have largely validated these suspicions: Think of how the establishment media handled the COVID pandemic, how they covered up President Biden’s incapacity, and the notorious CBS “interview” of Kamala Harris. Readers knowledgeable about the modern “convention of states” movement might think also of the disinformation spread by legacy media, apparently to discourage efforts to curb the D.C. establishment.

The role played by professional “newspersons” in suppressing truth and promoting establishment propaganda has made freedom of the press for ordinary citizens more important than ever.

And the internet has made fact-gathering, reporting, and commentary by ordinary citizens more feasible than ever.

Freedom of the press is a right that belongs to us all. It is not the preserve of a professional cartel.  Granting privileges only to the few undermines rather that promotes that right. Senate Bill 77 should be amended accordingly, and existing Colorado privileges should be either extended to all or repealed.