OK-conceding, for the sake of argument, that CNN can do this. How far do they get to go with threatening private citizens’ anonymity for posting things on the internet which CNN doesn’t like? Do they get to do this to every private citizen who posts something they don’t like, if in theory they wanted to use time and resources to do that? Won’t that have a chilling effect, to say the least, on free speech? I’m only talking about private citizens here, who mostly won’t have the resources and connections to fight such a huge entity as CNN. So in effect, CNN would control speech.
Every single day, events occur that draw otherwise private citizens into news stories and those people names are released in the media.
Why is this case any different.