This is about business speech which is more restrictive than free speech.
Well, no and yes. The Supreme Court does have a different standard of reviewing commercial advertising speech, however commercial speech must involve the proposal of a transaction, which is where the commerce part comes in. [
Bolger v. Youngs Drug, 463 U.S. 60]. Speech by a business is not commercial speech just because it is made by a business.
Only to the extent that there is fraudulent intent and identifiable harm because of it. The Supreme Court recently invalidated a federal law which criminalized lying about receiving military medals, even though lying is bad speech. [
US v. Alvarez, 132 S. Ct. 2537]. You would need to show that the studies were doctored in some way AND that because they were doctored, something bad happened. And considering emissions have been trending downward and the greens have had a lot of victories, it'd be hard to show that some specific study undermined the global warming movement so much that it caused X damages to the environment.
I mean, I'm opposed to FCC censorship of the airways as well, however the current legal distinction is that radio and basic television spectrum frequencies are "public airways" and are subject to general regulation by the feds. [
Red Lion v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367]. Citizens are entitled to receive these frequencies, including in their house. The near instantaneous transmission of content however can allow for super dee duper bad stuff to slip by. Because citizens are supposed to feel safe in their house, and also supposed to be entitled to receive TV and radio transmissions, fleeting nudity/profanity can create a "captive audience" which the feds may protect against. [
FCC v. Pacifica, 438 U.S. 726]. This principle is also applied to unsolicited porn ads that are mailed to your house, or George Carlin's 7 Dirty Words monologue on the radio. [
Ginzburg v. US, 383 U.S. 463]. The same problem does not apply however to things like phone sex hotlines, or cable, or internet websites, because a person chooses to receive the content and is therefore not a captive audience. [
Sable Communications v. FCC, 492 U.S. 115 ;
U.S. v. Playboy, 529 U.S. 803]
Again I don't agree with the level of fed regulation over public airways, but the distinction is that in one case the government is regulating activity over de facto government property which is targeted at a vulnerable audience, and in the other the feds are harassing scientists, even though no one is forced to read the offending study and there are plenty of rival studies that are freely available.
Did mommy forget to pack your apple juice?
