Internet access is now a basic human right (2016)
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Can you really put this in the same category as the right to pursue happiness or health? or the right to defend yourself?
Classifying everything as a right is super fun and feels important but it actually takes away from the actual human rights.
Health care is another example - do you have the right to an EKG machine? or a drug that was just invented using thousands of man hours of pharma research? Should those people work for free so that a poor persons rights are not violated?
Just because something is a human right, doesn't mean society (or whoever else) has to provide that for free.
The whole reason we have the concept of rights is that a social structure in which people do not have rights is an illegitimate one. An impoverished island nation which cannot afford to provide healthcare or internet access to its citizens is not illegitimate because of it.
I'm not saying this article is alone in diluting the meaning of a "right", it's been going on for years all around the world. That dilution, though, has made it basically useless as a concept.
As neither are true, it begs the question.
It's hardly any different than a family member who has a gambling problem, or drug addiction. Do you kick them to the curb? Or do you persist in making the best of a crappy situation? In most families it's a back and forth between making the best and punishing them in a persistent passive aggressive struggle.
And global politics is no different, no less messy. But having ethical standards is still not useless.
Article 26.
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
> I'm not saying this article is alone in diluting the meaning of a "right", it's been going on for years all around the world. That dilution, though, has made it basically useless as a concept.
Therefore, rights only exist to guide and constrain what humans do, and any group of humans living together is a society.
I can assert rights to other people without being a member of human society. My right to the apple on the ground is the classic example.
The only people who aren't members of society live entirely alone 100% of the time.
Edited because I can't reply:
We've hit a definitional issue, and we're not going to be able to resolve it.
You know what definition I used, I know what definition you're using, so continuing is pointless.
All rights are social covenants provided by fellow humans.
Not by people, is the point. Rights only apply in terms of humans and human society, obviously.
That's simply just an absurd and frankly silly point. Stop arguing about what words should mean and pay attention to the message people are communicating. Rights are whatever society agrees they are, it's as simple as that, nothing more and nothing less; no rights are inherent. There is not "should", there is only what is.
But if "rights" encompass things that a perfectly just, well-intentioned society might very well _not be physically capable_ of providing, simply due to lack of resources, then what the hell is the point of calling something a "right" at all? What does that accomplish? What does that mean?
All I'm saying is that this new, pretty much meaningless definition we've given it of "stuff we want" is much less useful than the original.
And outdated and not accepted one. Don't be a prescriptivist, words don't have a single fixed meaning, just because Lock defined right to mean something long long ago doesn't mean that's what people mean when they use the word.
> If we decide it's this new, broader thing, then so be it.
That was decided by the masses long ago. Language evolves. This is not "new" nor is it meaningless. Rights means stuff we as a majority agree everyone should have, it's not less useful, and it's what rights have always actually meant. Anyone arguing about natural rights vs whatever is having a meaningless semantic argument with no one who matters. There are no natural rights, the concept is frankly silly; rights are inherently social in nature and have always been simply what people agree on.
Yes, I know. I agreed with that in the comment you're replying to.
> Rights means stuff we as a majority agree everyone should have, it's not less useful, and it's what rights have always actually meant.
If "rights" are just "things we want people to have", then why is "internet access" a right, but not a yacht or a penthouse apartment? Wouldn't we be happier if everyone had those?
I don't give a shit, really, if people go for a "Locke conception" of rights or whatever. I just don't really have a clue what it means anymore to say something is a "human right," if it includes super expensive stuff that a lot of countries can't afford.
Things we "agree" people should have. You won't find a majority of society agrees everyone should have a penthouse or a yacht, why... because rights are determined by reason and it's unreasonable to provide everyone with a penthouse and a yacht, it is not unreasonable to provide everyone with internet access. How do we define reasonable... through thoughtful discussion, debate, and law.
You're trying to cut the human out of the equation and have some way to define right that's internally logically self consistent, but people don't work that way. Agreement that something is reasonable is how humans work.
> I just don't really have a clue what it means anymore to say something is a "human right," i
I don't think that's true, I think you can perfectly well see how these things are defined, you just don't like it for some reason.
Nothing, that's rather the point I'm making, rights are not inherent, they are social agreements and are thus always up for renegotiation. You are agreeing with me.
That's not what the OP is doing, the OP is trying to claim something isn't a right because it doesn't fit his definition of the word, he's pulling a no true Scottsman on a thing saying it's not a right even though society agrees it is.
edit: and by that, I mean that it doesn't make sense to call the OP's argument absurd.
I don't believe that the OP is pulling a No True Scottsman. A No True Scottsman is really all about shifting your definition of a category in unprincipled ways in response to counter-examples. The OP is simply saying that many things other people call rights should not be.
I do think it's a fallacy to claim that, given the fluidity of language, there is therefore no meaningful concept that we might be trying to point to.
I do think there is a meaningful concept that the OP is trying to bring clarity on by restricting the meaning and usage of the word rights. I think the way the word "rights" is used today unhelpfully equivocates between different concepts and thus impoverishes our ability to think clearly about legal and policy issues.
Language may something that is negotiated, a social construct, but it is not arbitrary.
Oh, ok, yes he is and that's the problem, he's wrong. It's a stupid semantic debate where he's arguing over a word and everyone else is discussing what things we should guarantee everyone has. We call those things rights, whether the OP likes it or not, the issue at hand is what those rights should be, not what the word rights means.
And I would say that settling on a useful definition of the word is a great way to settle the question of actual policy. In this sense, the definition becomes a decision criteria.
The attempt to limit rights to categories like positive, negative, or natural is a pointless semantic debate that doesn't actually matter because law doesn't work that way, it works by consensus, which is messy and not always rational out of context of the history of the times they came to be. Quite simply, it's naive.
Something is a right if enough people say it is, period. No other criteria matters, never has, and never will. You either understand this, or you don't and engage is pointless debates telling people they can't use a particular word because you're too dumb to realize they're discussing a concept that exists independently of the word "right" and your attempt to forbid them from using the word "right" to represent that concept isn't going to change the concept they're discussing.
As soon as you say what rights ought to be, you've just excluded yourself from the discussion and started a semantic debate. There is no "ought", there is simply that which enough people agree to.
For the record, I'm not advocating for calling any of those things rights. Simply posing a question regarding the above statements.
Property, like money and other social constructs, require a society to recognise it. You can't "own" anything of other people don't recognise the fact that you own it. Which means you need society to govern who owns what.
To redirect back to the parent post: if you don't want to call them rights, do you think internet access should be an essential privilege that governments must secure for their people? If so, how do you propose that privilege be fulfilled in rural communities that currently don't have internet access? It would seem to be a fundamental violation of the governmental charter not to provide it, and who would be held accountable for that violation?
>If so, how do you propose that privilege be fulfilled in rural communities that currently don't have internet access?
I think a lot of the noise around this issue comes down to not clearly delineating between positive and negative rights:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=positive+vs.+negative+rights
...in the American tradition, "internet access as a right" means that that others (government, etc.) can't deprive you of whatever internet access you happen to have. Whereas other traditions interpret "internet access as a right" as something that the community needs to provide to individuals.
By not letting monopolistic ISPs stop municipal networks.
Nationalizing everything is not going to work. Most water, electric boards are not national/state government responsibilities. Venezuela model does not work, can't work for USA for sure.
Because these are elected officials or appointed by these elected officials, if the public found their judgement to be wrong or unfair, they can elect someone else to judge it.
I stated that the people delegate these types of decision to elected officials. Their job is to protect the people. If, in some instance, they judged that a protest was in danger of harming the people and cutting cellular spectrum to that protest was the most effective method which could immediately relieve that danger, they could and should take it. And lastly, they should explain to the public why they took that measure.
The people can then judge if it was a good decision or not through the democratic process. Which I have apparently limited my potential vote count by 1 if I ever decided to run.
Like, the US would be safer if we confiscated every gun and made gun ownership illegal. It'd be a worse country to live in, though, according to our own values. It's not worth the trade - we care about more than simple safety.
Flooding in Houston - it is the governments job to help people to safety. It isn't their job to buy them a new home if they didn't purchase insurance.
What I mean for example is it's not the citizens role to form a mob and hunt down a suspected criminal. That's the governments role.
Honestly, I struggle to come up with a scenario where jamming public internet access would be the best course of action. But hypothetically I don't see it as a violation of human rights to temporarily stop people in an area from communicating through the Internet on public airwaves if it's a reasonable and effective countermeasure to preventing disaster.
Happy to hear it. But it's pretty important to me and I think most other people that any government vested with the power to do that be required to legislate - through legislative representatives into the supreme law, not via FCC or other cabinet regulations - an exact and generalized criteria that can't be tainted by discretionary judgment or classified information without criminal accountability. It's not easy to formulate - as it shouldn't be.
http://www.inquisitr.com/3428608/london-mayor-sadiq-khan-to-...
That's what effective method rational has resulted into. I would rather have them go by the book, than what they imagine to be effective.
As for the first link, although it's absolutely crazy (especially considering that the "less vulnerable" people likely subsidize most of the police force) we do live in a society and someone has to make the decisions. These people are elected or appointed by the elected. If we don't like it we can protest and run another candidate and elect them.
It honestly sounds like pragmatism from a police force that has been decimated by budget cuts made by elected representatives whose electorate simply doesn't want to pay the taxes required to fully fund a police force that can service everyone. You can't have it both ways. If it bothers you then vote for someone who says they will increase the budget by other cutting programs you don't value as much or by raising taxes.
Take action through the democratic process to invoke the change you'd like to see and shape the world. The people passing policy you don't like certainly have and are the authority precisely because they have. But there's nothing stopping you.
>Take action
I am, by speaking up here.
What do you mean?
Your comments seem to be advocating for democratic totalitarianism, which is directly opposed the concept of individual rights.
If you want to organize a group of people to use a public facility you need to request a permit. This is so that proper actions can be taken to make the event safe and to ensure that others have not planned access to that resource for that day.
The state can not refuse to give a permit because of the content of the protest or organization - that would be a rights violation. However, if the gathering becomes unruly and dangerous to the public then of course it can be broken up. You are now violating the rights of others and that's where your rights end.
Society and civilization does not survive in chaos.
"Dangerous to the public" is simply one of the standard refrains used by groups in power looking to suppress others under the color of law. It's easy to argue that dissent should be contained when you're part of the majority.
There's another type: the ability to do things and reshape the environment in the ways you want. Call it "agency" instead. Democracy isn't necessarily conducive to fostering agency.
> It [dissent] should work to peacefully persuade enough of its virtue to become the oppressive majority
The existence of my rights does not depend on my ability to convince a majority that I have those rights. Your assertion sounds like someone who comfortably enjoys the power of the majority, lording it over the oppressed.
> Otherwise it's totalitarianism
Democracy and totalitarianism are orthogonal, but most adherents of democracy seem to fall back on totalitarianism, because they mistakenly believe that having a voice is sufficient freedom. In actuality, tyranny of the majority is still tyranny. Which is why we have the concept of rights that can be appealed to beyond whatever the local mob decides.
This does not mean anyone should "work for free", states and other administrations are supposed to guarantee human rights and they can pay for that work.
What about in a country in crisis like Venezuela with no money to afford human rights?
In a time of crisis, do farmers and doctors need to work for free to guarantee the human rights of others? How about Amazon warehouse workers?
Yes, as they have always done. It's called paying taxes.
In my country, the media even underlines that every year by calculating how many days the average worker does "for free" (ie, to pay the various taxes), and on that day, counting from January 1st, they announce it on TV and such.
You do have a right to food, shelter, and physical security, and if you don't have those, then yes, your rights are being violated and the government is failing in it's responsibilities.
I don't know, I mean rights as we know it didn't exist until relatively recently when they were recognised and enforced by governments.
I don't see how "free speech" can exist without something protecting that right. Yes, I know, technically the person shutting you up is technically violating your right. But without an objective arbiter such as society, they were just exercising their right to shut you up, which, in their view, is their god given right, who's to say.
States cannot pay until they have a value to pay with, and the value a state can dispose of is created by individuals.
A right used to mean something that was passed to you by 'your creator' because of your humanity. A right wasn't something someone else could provide, it was only something we could all defend. Life, liberty, property. Not the work output of another man; that used to be called slavery.
> A right used to mean something that was passed to you by 'your creator' because of your humanity.
No, words don't work that way. The word has always meant both of those things, some people like to use the word that way, and others have always used it in other ways because get this... words have multiple meanings and always have. There was never a time where what you said is true, you're romanticizing and simplify the past as if back then everyone just agree. Guess what, they didn't.
Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
Depends; is someone doing it on purpose so that you don't have access, or it is a genuine equipment failure?
This is a bad argument, because it ignores the vector of the rights removal, and that matters in this debate.
For example, if a tree falls on you in a storm while you are writing an anti-government book and you die are your rights being violated? Obviously not. However if THE GOVERNMENT™ comes in and kills you for speaking against them then yes your rights are being violated.
Your example would be better served to say: A simple test, if the government shuts your internet down for [reasons] are your rights being violated? Not as simple of an answer.
I disagree that the internet is a basic right, but don't think that's the best argument.
I think you're leaving out the example that highlights most obvious criticism of this formulation of rights. That example would be the government not using public funds to provide access to the internet.
Should government provide you a book and a pen to write your anti-government book? That is equivalent of internet. If I chose to live on top of some mountain should government spend $$$ to stretch a line to my mountain ?
Perhaps the libertarian concept of free speech is the "ability to talk to oneself in an empty room", which is pathetic.
Not sure why it is pathetic because you can always bring people in who are interesting in listening. What is your concept of "free speech" then ? Going into other people's home and shouting ?
> Who is going to stop the government from telling you to keep your mouth shut
The constitution and courts. If both those options fail it is reasonable to pick up arms against the government too.
"The government has banned congregating, and one of the people you're meeting with in secret is a mole who is going to rat you out to the government anyways. There is also a network of listening equipment installed in various properties to monitor citizen behavior."
That isn't fantasy, it has really happened in some societies. The point is, if the society you're part of does not value freedom of speech, it can be squashed. One can speak their mind, but with the threat of dire consequences, their mouth remains shut, and their "right to free speech" suppressed. If a right is suppressed, who is burdened with protecting that right? No one? Is the above example of an oppressive society acceptable with the concept of free speech being a negative right? If so, the concept of negative rights is useless in a realistic context, as it is merely being pedantic and does not actually offer a better alternative. With a bar so low, terrible outcomes become "acceptable".
Typically free speech means you can speak your mind in a public forum without fear of harm. This includes dissenting views of the current government. While others may actually attempt to harm you, laws are in place to make those parties potentially reconsider taking such actions.
>The constitution and courts. If both those options fail it is reasonable to pick up arms against the government too.
Maintaining a constitution and court system is of no burden to anyone? So your form of free speech requires the forced service of judges and legislators? If arms are required, who is to provide them? Are you going to force gunsmiths to provide everyone with a gun?
It is, in some countries. People are forgetting that human rights is just a law. Human rights are different in different countries and times. It's just a set of (very vague) rules a bunch of people agreed on, nothing more.
The distinction you're making is that of negative and positive rights, which is an important basic topic in traditional rights theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights
I can understand making internet a right as an extension of "free speech". For example no convict should ever be disallowed from using internet and so on.
Most people confuse positive rights and negative rights.
The inherent / natural / fundamental rights are the negative rights: life, liberty, and property. These are the rights that nobody else may take away from you unilaterally, hence "negative." These may be further distilled into the basic right of self-ownership over your body. It requires an appreciation of human dignity to acknowledge these rights.
The positive rights are more like privileges: things that somebody else must provide for you. These are not really rights at all, since it makes someone else your slave in the extreme case, hence violating their prior right to liberty. These "rights" should be called "privileges" instead, and we'll stop being confused about it.
Let's go to the extreme: the desert island. If I'm sick, and you're a doctor, and I have a right to healthcare, then what? If I truly have that right, and you are the only one who may provide it, then I can force you to treat my sickness, and you become my slave. The same goes for clean water, food, shelter, education, police protection, internet access, flying cars, etc.
Yes, there are plenty of things that are really nice to have and make living in a modern society a lot better. But these are not rights. Too often we abridge the fundamental rights in order to provide the privileges of citizenship bestowed upon the masses by redistributive governments.
Examples of this can be speech, in the US, the government does not grant speech, but rather they do not block access to it (within limits as defined by the SC). Also, the right the bear arms, it's something again that is inherently the citizens but the government does not block access.
In the case of Internet, it being a right is different to it being a utility. As a right the government would be obligated to not block people from accessing it (again SC caveat) but has no obligation to provide it.
I will caveat by saying that also disallowed are underhanded methods of blocking access to rights or blocked rights as a side effect (whether intentional or not). So the government and citizenry has to ensure that rights are being preserved by evaluating new and existing laws and adjust course as needed (either via redrafting legislation or via the SC)
Of course, the above definition assumes the existence of a state, but I think that's fair. In a true anarchy we have all freedoms but of course the risks that go with that. The establishment of a state necessitates the blocking of some "freedoms" but depending on the government we retain some, which are then known as rights.
From the perspective that rights are a legal device that people or governments create (and enforce) in order to achieve broad social or government aims in the form of a citizen's baseline, then internet as a right should be on the table for discussion. It should be noted that rights as a legal device and rights as an innate moral assumption are not contradictory.
I do believe that internet will become increasingly related to a person's ability to communicate, summon vehicles, find out and talk about government and politics, organize and find human meetings, use maps, utilize business services, or coordinate emergency information.
Without internet, a person can still do these things, but I think there's a general drop in quality of reach and capability. I think there's also a discussion to be had about whether a citizen baseline of internet access means a more prosperous or robust nation.
When are you going to charge Google/Twitter/Facebook/Reddit for banning speech that they don't like on the Internet?
Is Free Speech a human right according to UN?
Is criticism of religion, or ideology, included in that right?
2) Yes.
3) Yes.
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/un-adopts-religious-int...
How should I trust your words now?
This is a resolution passed by the Human Rights Council, but it is not a human right. It does not disallow anything. It talks about promoting and encouraging respect, deploring discrimination and violence, noting concern, recognizing contributions, etc. These are all soft, non-binding commitments.
The only actual obligation is "to prohibit discrimination on the basis of religion or belief and to implement measures to guarantee the equal and effective protection of the law", which does not conflict at all with freedom of speech.
It also includes "the positive role that the exercise of the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the full respect for the freedom to seek, receive and impart information can play in strengthening democracy and combating religious intolerance", which seems to address your concerns.
I have seen many cases of criticism of religion equated with criticism of every person who happen to be tagged as person of that religion, and used as a reason to stifle speech.
In Canada and USA, the situation is reversed on free speech. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/derek-james-from/canadas-hypocr...
As I said, the only concrete obligation in the resolution is prohibiting discrimination. Speech is not discrimination, and the Human Rights Council has never claimed that it is.
Am I wrong?
The person said that she/he was a Diplomat who negotiated this law.
>negotiating laws and charging corporations are very different things.
I agree. UN is toothless in enforcing anything, it is just grandstanding anyway. That was the point of my question, when do they propose on doing something about the corporations who invalidate the rights to speech. To show just that.
"""
Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
"""
There may actually be a case for the US needing to change their laws to extend free-speech protections to things that happen on the internet. But that's a whole separate issue. Maybe something the EFF would be interested in?
That Article would be more relevant to countries with hate speech laws or blasphemy laws.
In a more normative sense (that is, describing what should be as opposed to simply what is), private entities should be able to enforce their own rules, there shouldn't be any limits to how many private entities there are, and it should be simple to move from one private entity to another.
In fact, I'd support data portability laws, simply based on the concept that data is an objectively valuable property and should be owned by the people it was generated from.
The baker should be able to deny baking a cake to gay couple?
A pharmacist should be able to deny knowing options about birth control based on religious rights?
A hospital should be able to deny removal of life sustaining device when I don't want it anymore?
>Private entities can do what they want.
Is there a difference between a private entity and a public corporation?
If I run my own plumbing company, I can hire my son without putting up an ad in the paper. Should a Google executive be allowed to hire her husband without putting up an ad?
We hold public companies at a higher standard that private individuals, correctly so.
What if Mead stopped you from using their notebook to write down a thought that they don't agree with?
Protected class.
> A pharmacist should be able to deny knowing options about birth control based on religious rights?
> A hospital should be able to deny removal of life sustaining device when I don't want it anymore?
You want to get into the special laws and regulations the medical field operates under? Really? Really? Because I can guarantee you don't. I can guarantee you are not qualified to do that, and do not have the patience to even start.
Leave it alone. It is its own world and always has been.
> What if Mead stopped you from using their notebook to write down a thought that they don't agree with?
It's more useful to have competition than regulation, because regulation can be gamed. Regulation is required when competition is not possible, does not happen, or when the potential for harm is so high that we cannot simply trust to competition, as in the medical field.
I contend that social media platforms of YouTube/Twitter/Facebook are at that level now. Competition is not possible and harm has clearly been done.
I agree with you, and I think the regulation we need includes data portability regulation: Make it a legal requirement for companies to allow you to get all of your data (which those companies primarily exist to monetize anyway) out of their web services complete, in a simple fashion, in a way which allows you to put it into your own system or upload it into a competitor's system.
Other laws might be required as well, but data portability would be a good start.
Shouldn't I be allowed to give a forwarding address so that my audience that I developed, can reach me on the new platform that I go to?
I don't think any youtube creator worth her salt doesn't keep backup of the videos. The problem with google kicking you out is that you lose your audience. Severing the connection between you and your audience is the biggest issue here, not loss of some files.
Google should be forced to honor forwarding URL (e.g. to vimeo) for accounts that it suspends.
Obama Administration supported banning criticism of Islam: https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/un-adopts-religious-int...
Google/Twitter/Facebook/Reddit are private entities that own their platforms and can enforce rules there.
There are private entities, public corporations and government.
We hold government to highest standard of equality, we give private entities most freedom to discriminate. Public corporation with share holders are held somewhere in between.
Your friend can kick a person spouting white separatist views out of his room. Good call, in my opinion, by your friend.
Should Mead, makers of paper notebooks, have a right to see what someone has writing in a notebook and take away the notebook if they don't like what's being written?
Edit: I was serious. I really liked what you said, especially: "Human rights aren't "provided" to you. You are born with them and they can never be taken away, only violated by thugs and tyrants."
To ensure that all Americans can afford at least a minimal level of basic telephone service, the FCC will not allow phone companies to charge more than $6.50 for a single line. https://www.fcc.gov/general/faqs-telephone
The Subscriber Line Charge and Universal Service Fund and Connect America Fund, and various other subsidies going back to the early 1900's were instituted to deal with all kinds of dissatisfaction of unregulated market outcomes. If people liked what the market arrived at, we wouldn't have such a complex pile of subsidies: subsidies for rural areas, subsidies for those in poverty, subsidies for hospitals and doctors, subsidies for libraries.
Today's internet is effectively becoming a superset of the telephone, and it was massively subsidized especially for rural areas. Whatever the opposite of economies of scale is, that's what telephone service looked like in rural areas if only the free market were to apply. Same for roads in rural areas for that matter.
Anyway, it might be fair to consider internet access a "basic human right" as hyperbole. It's not itself food, clothing, or shelter. But it's a means of obtaining and maintaining them. Perhaps it's a civil right to have affordable and reasonably performing internet service? It's certainly at least a civil matter, even if it's not a basic human one.
You can give free internet access to everyone by e.g. setting up computers with access in public libraries. That can be done in practically any society, except those so impoverished that they already fail to guarantee other human rights in the first place. So I don't think the idea of making Internet access a human right is as far-fetched as some comments here are making it sound.
If the United Nations decides [x] is a human right, than what are the consequences to civil servants for not providing that human right? Are they labeled human rights abusers?
Is a judge a human right abuser if he takes away internet access from a sex offender?
Yes.
Seriously, can we start being a little more sparing in the use of the word “right”? What was once a strong word is quickly becoming meaningless political jargon.
It is not, despite a fairly popular misconception encouraged by institutional media, a concept of special rights for a particular industry or class of occupations.
It was only later in the 1900's that the definition of "the press" was extended by the courts to cover new media like the radio
No, it wasn't. Criers existed.
More to the point, though, presses were and are used by more than the news media, and freedom of the press applies to those wishing to use the press whether or not it was in the context of news media.
The news media wasn't the focus of the original freedom, nor is it the correct generalization to new technology (which would be more “freedom to use mechanisms to reproduce and distribute expressions”.)
“The press” in “freedom of the press” is, literally, the printing press (and, by implication, it's necessary paraphernalia, including paper for printing, type, etc.), not the news media or the people working in it.
[0] e.g., https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_1...