If the Enquirer violated campaign finance laws by spiking the stories it purchased, would it also be illegal to spike stories it spent money to research? Both things happen in the media world, but the latter is likely far more common. If a news outlet devotes substantial resources to digging on a candidate, then chooses not to publish what it found because it doesn’t like the political implications, would that be illegal?
In fact, in this day and age, when advocacy organizations, think tanks and corporations have publications, and websites or even Twitter feeds function as the equivalent of printing presses, it is difficult to know who even qualifies for the “press” exemption. We are likely to see more and more claims of that exemption by political partisans operating outside of traditional media.
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