It's a far cry from forbidding campaign spending on media to forbidding media from discussing a campaign. And I highly doubt the most discussed campaign wins.

It's a far cry from forbidding campaign spending on media to forbidding media from discussing a campaign. And I highly doubt the most discussed campaign wins. Democracy rests on only 2 pillars: the freedom of speech, and a fair vote. Everything else we call democracy flows from these two things, and we cannot afford to ever give them up. It turns out, though, that if you say something often enough, people start to believe it. This violates the spirit of the law, because "free speech" is about sharing views, not programming dependent (as opposed to independent) minds. Note that the notion of "free speech" arose in a time when it meant actually speaking in front of a crowd, or printing and distributing an anonymous flier, critical of the current ruler. It did not mean protecting the right of the ruler to use his power to repeat something so often that his people start to believe it. It is time for a revolution in the way individuals relate to information. It is time for individuals to assert their right to refuse input that is not in their interest. It is time for communication to be by consent only. It is time for us all to stop defending the right of institutional oligarchs to use power-tools to force-feed us speech in the name of defending free speech.