One of the things I find striking about today’s Supreme Court rulings is the extent to which the free-speech angle is downplayed in media coverage of the Wisconsin Right to Life decision. Consider the LA Times write-up of today’s decisions:

The Supreme Court gave President Bush and Republican leaders two important victories today by clearing the way for corporate-funded broadcast ads before next year’s election and by shielding the White House’s “faith-based initiative” from challenge in the courts.

The term “speech” only appears twice in the coverage of the decision, and in both cases they’re in quotes of the majority decision. The reporter never describes the case as a free-speech case himself. And let’s be clear here: “corporate funded” doesn’t mean ads funded by Exxon-Mobil or Microsoft. In this particular case, it was a pro-life organization—a grassroots non-profit—that was being prevented from promoting its views on television. The NRA, the ACLU, the Sierra Club, and dozens of other genuine issue advocacy organizations had their free speech rights curtailed by BCRA. Now check out the coverage of the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case later in the same story:

In a third ruling, the court gave school principals the authority to discipline students who advocate the use of illegal drugs at schools. Roberts said the court was not rejecting the notion that high school students had free-speech rights, but rather making clear that these rights were limited, especially when students advocated in favor of illegal drugs.

The decision reversed a free-speech ruling in favor of a high school student from Juneau, Alaska, who had been suspended for holding up a banner that read “Bong hits for Jesus.”

So the right to unfurl a “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner is a free-speech issue, but the right to air television ads critical of elected officials is just partisan politics.

You see the same sort of bias in the New York Times coverage of the ruling. The word “speech” doesn’t appear in the story until the fifth paragraph, at which point it’s used in the following sentence: “Its detractors see it as interference with free speech.” In contrast, in the second paragraph, the article states that “the high court opened a significant loophole in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002.”

On the other hand, the headline in the Times write-up of the “Bong Hits” case is: “Supreme Court Limits Students’ Speech Rights.” The article starts off by saying ” The Supreme Court tightened limits on student speech Monday.”

So when a high school principal prohibits a student from displaying a nonsensical “Bong hits 4 Jesus” sign, that’s a restriction on the student’s speech. However, when Congress tells Wisconsin Right-to-Life and the ACLU that they’re not allowed to buy ads criticizing elected officials in the month before an election, that’s merely closing a loophole in campaign finance law.