The state legislature has passed a misguided — and probably unconstitutional — bill that could bar everyone from advertisers to activists from leaving flyers outside buildings whose owners indicate that they do not wish to receive such flyers.
We understand the motivation behind the bill — plenty of homeowners complain of unwanted flyers, menus and advertising circulars. But a law against such items would both stifle and skew the free exchange of political thought and commercial action.
The Brooklyn Paper doesn’t have a dog in this fight — we’re explicitly exempt from the bill’s regulations and onerous fines, $250 to $1,000 per infraction. In fact, we could view the bill as giving us an advantage in the competition for advertising dollars.
Yet despite our possible gain, we oppose it and urge Gov. Spitzer to veto it. Here’s why:
• It’s one thing to allow owner-occupants of single family homes the right to refuse products they don’t want, but what about multi-unit buildings? Should a building’s owner be allowed to cut off the free flow of information to his tenants?
• The newspaper exemption itself poses special concerns. First, we’re leery of any government regulation that seeks to define what is or is not a “news”paper.
Second, circular distributors could seek to get around the bill by turning ads into stories like, “Locals go crazy over beauty product sale in aisle 4 at…!” or “It’s summer! Time for a new barbecue grill — on sale now!”
And third, faux-newspapers could very easily — and cheaply — be filled with press releases and unctuous “grip-and-grin” photos of local elected officials, exempting such circular distributors from the bill so long as they play ball with the incumbents and give them lots of free publicity.
Brooklyn has enough fake “newspapers” that already work (not so subtly, in our view) as public relations machines for chosen politicians and developers. We don’t need more.
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As a bedrock principle, we oppose any government action that could discourage the free exchange of ideas, both political and commercial. And the line between the two is finer that you might imagine.
The fact is, speech is speech — whether it’s your local pizzeria dropping off its menu at your doorstep, a politician handing out a flyer, a developer promoting his project, or a newspaper blaring headlines from a box at the corner.
And people already have in place a mechanism to handle such speech: it’s called the free market. If no one visits the pizzeria, it closes down, and the flyers stop coming; politicians get voted out of office; developers’ spin gets countered by truth.
It goes against this country’s principles for the legislature to write a law specifically aimed at a person or company’s right to get the word out.
The New York State legislature has done just that. Gov. Spitzer should not allow them to get away with it.
