July 25, 2011 1:23PM # An Intended Consequence By [John Samples](https://www.cato.org/people/john-samples) --- SHARE The *New Republic* has an interesting article explaining [“How Campaign Finance Laws Made the British Press so Powerful.”](http://www.tnr.com/article/world/92507/campaign-finance-united-kingdom-news-corporation) Basically, only British newspapers are free of regulations that suppress political speech. The author suggests adding more controls (including content restrictions) on the British newspapers to enforce “impartial” coverage. In other words, the media should be just as repressed as everyone else, and political leaders should be free of criticism. Like many others, I have long thought that U.S. newspapers editorialize in favor of campaign finance restrictions to control competing speech and thereby become more powerful. After *Citizens United*, other organizations now enjoy the same First Amendment protections as media corporations like *The New York Times* and *The Washington Post*. No doubt that does mean such corporations are less powerful than they would be if campaign finance laws suppressed political speech that competes with their editorials and news reports. However, such competition is good for voters. ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).