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> idea of free speech would protect leadership in the newsroom from subordinates

If protecting the management from the workers is your goal, typically you invoke the right of the owners to dictate how work is organised, I'm not sure how you make that into a "free speech" issue.

As the work of the editor is explicitly to direct and reshape the speech of the employees under them, why would "free speech" protect the ones doing the censoring?

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That's the point it wouldn't. It's not a question of free speech but rather the assurance that periodical's leadership can be protected from their workers or general criticism about poor direction that their periodicals are taking or are being forced to take due to changes in the media landscape.

Put more succinctly, imagine someone blaming the failure of their news organization on their readers opinions of free speech as opposed to their own shoddy workmanship, or an inability to compete with more modern forms of media.

And I was specifically referring to the ideas of free speech that the news outlet is striving to defend or at least define.

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