• The right to freedom of the press similarly reduces to property rights. The owner of a printing press, paper, ink, and other publishing resources has the right to publish whatever opinions he or she wishes; furthermore, other authors may execute voluntary agreements with publishers to produce books, newspapers, and other materials that may be sold or donated to members of the general public. Freedom of the press does not entail a "right" to coerce a newspaper owner to publish particular viewpoints; such coercion would in fact be a gross violation of that newspaper's freedom of the press. When freedom of the press is framed in terms of property rights, it becomes clear that it applies not only to paper media, but also to the airwaves. The electronic media were not foreseen by America's founders and therefore were not explicitly mentioned in the Bill of Rights. Yet such media enjoy a wider audience today than newspapers and serve a function equivalent to that of newspapers in 1791. Nevertheless, modern courts, revealing a devastating ignorance of the basic nature of concepts, have ruled that broadcast media are not "press" and hence are not permitted the same freedom as paper media. Only an utterly concrete-bound observer, unfamiliar with the basic process by which humans abstract objective concepts from experience (as described in Subsection 1.3), could construe the concept press, cited in the First Amendment, as applying only to the medium of ink on paper. An objective epistemology recognizes that concepts must be applied within one's expanding context of knowledge. Thus the concept of freedom of the press extends to the same essential function, even as it is realized by newer technology.     

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