Cite as: 518 U. S. 727 (1996)
Opinion of Thomas, J.
(1969), we held that, in light of the scarcity of broadcasting frequencies, the Government may require a broadcast licensee "to share his frequency with others and to conduct himself as a proxy or fiduciary with obligations to present those views and voices which are representative of his community and which would otherwise, by necessity, be barred from the airwaves." Id., at 389. We thus endowed the public with a right of access "to social, political, esthetic, moral, and other ideas and experiences." Id., at 390. That public right left broadcasters with substantial, but not complete, First Amendment protection of their editorial discretion. See, e. g., Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. v. Democratic National Committee, 412 U. S. 94, 117-118 (1973) ("A broadcast licensee has a large measure of journalistic freedom but not as large as that exercised by a newspaper").
In contrast, we have not permitted that level of government interference in the context of the print media. In Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U. S. 241 (1974), for instance, we invalidated a Florida statute that required newspapers to allow, free of charge, a right of reply to political candidates whose personal or professional character the paper assailed. We rejected the claim that the statute was constitutional because it fostered speech rather than restricted it, as well as a related claim that the newspaper could permissibly be made to serve as a public forum. Id., at 256-258. We also flatly rejected the argument that the newspaper's alleged media monopoly could justify forcing the paper to speak in contravention of its own editorial discretion. Id., at 256.
Our First Amendment distinctions between media, dubious from their infancy,1 placed cable in a doctrinal wasteland in which regulators and cable operators alike could not be sure whether cable was entitled to the substantial First Amendment protections afforded the print media or was
1 See Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U. S. 622, 638, and n. 5 (1994).
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