You're exactly right and I think it's important to consider that the LA Times' position as a sort of authority figure when it comes to speech (being a major news source/ media entity) may be an underlying interest in how the arguments made in this article are put forward. I imagine a whole lot of editors of the last few newspapers that are independently owned had some very interesting thoughts when the workers at New York Times pushed out some of it's leadership over an article Tom Cotton could have just as easily put on his website.
I agree that it's about cultural norms but I think the cultural norms are the cost and limiting factors of free expression being greatly reduced. I imagine an entity like the LA Times has an interest in defining how free speech works in the news room and subsequently the readers of that news source. I also imagine that idea of free speech would protect leadership in the newsroom from subordinates if everything published has to go through said leadership.
> idea of free speech would protect leadership in the newsroom from subordinates
If protecting the management from the workers is your goal, typically you invoke the right of the owners to dictate how work is organised, I'm not sure how you make that into a "free speech" issue.
As the work of the editor is explicitly to direct and reshape the speech of the employees under them, why would "free speech" protect the ones doing the censoring?
That's the point it wouldn't. It's not a question of free speech but rather the assurance that periodical's leadership can be protected from their workers or general criticism about poor direction that their periodicals are taking or are being forced to take due to changes in the media landscape.
Put more succinctly, imagine someone blaming the failure of their news organization on their readers opinions of free speech as opposed to their own shoddy workmanship, or an inability to compete with more modern forms of media.
And I was specifically referring to the ideas of free speech that the news outlet is striving to defend or at least define.
I agree that it's about cultural norms but I think the cultural norms are the cost and limiting factors of free expression being greatly reduced. I imagine an entity like the LA Times has an interest in defining how free speech works in the news room and subsequently the readers of that news source. I also imagine that idea of free speech would protect leadership in the newsroom from subordinates if everything published has to go through said leadership.