> There’s a very different case history for “freedom of the press” than “freedom of speech.” Legally, they’re different.
That is true.
> “Freedom of the press” has focused on the need for an informed public and institutional autonomy of the press. It is a public, not private, right.
But that's wildly wrong.
https://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/press.pdf
> Blackstone, for instance, wrote in 1769 that “[e]very freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public: to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press.” Jean-Louis de Lolme, an author widely cited by 1780s American writers, likewise wrote in his chapter on “Liberty of the Press” that “[e]very subject in England has not only a right to present petitions, to the King, or the Houses of Parliament; but he has a right also to lay his complaints and observations before the Public, by the means of an open press.”
> State supreme courts in 1788 and 1791 similarly described the liberty of the press as “permitting every man to publish his opinions,” and as meaning that “the citizen has a right to publish his sentiments upon all political, as well as moral and literary subjects.”
> Several early state constitutions echoed this as well, providing that “[e]very citizen may freely speak, write and print on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty.”
The difference between freedom of speech and freedom of the press is that the press involves mass production, making it easy to communicate a message to large numbers of people at low cost. When people rephrase "freedom of speech" and "freedom of the press" as "the freedom to speak, write, and print on any subject", the freedoms to speak and write come from the freedom of speech, and the freedom to print (or publish) comes from the freedom of the press.