A close friend of mine owns a newspaper here is town. He talks a lot about 1st amendment issues. His take: “Freedom of speech does not guarantee freedom of repurcussions for that speech”.
He says he can publish “The mayor sucks” as a headline and rest assured that the city cannot jail or litigate against him for that speech. The city however can pull their advertising from his paper and he would have no recourse. They could also withold access to staff members, making his job of covering city business more difficult. They could refuse to issue press credentials to him. They also could stop inviting his to city events. All legally.
The way he explains it, the 1st amendment is supposed to protect citizens and the press from the government using the courts as a weapon to suppress free speech. Now given the thought policing we are seeing in the US, even that is on shakey ground.
Given the rule of Rig-Talk is fairly wide open free speech, ifsomeone wants to be a dick we can ignore or be a dick right back at them… so long as we don’t issue physical threats or hurl racial epitaphs at them.
What I think is really interesting is that with such an open policy, RT does not have much abuse of that freedom. The lack of abuse of this freedom also makes it stick out like a sore thumb when someone does.