Cite as: 558 U. S. ____ (2010) 37 Opinion of the Court would be forbidden to speak or inform the public about the same issue. This differential treatment cannot be squared with the First Amendment. There is simply no support for the view that the First Amendment, as originally understood, would permit the suppression of political speech by media corporations. The Framers may not have anticipated modern business and media corporations. See McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm’n, 514 U. S. 334, 360–361 (1995) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment). Yet television networks and major newspapers owned by media corporations have become the most important means of mass communication in modern times. The First Amendment was certainly not understood to condone the suppression of political speech in society’s most salient media. It was understood as a response to the repression of speech and the press that had existed in England and the heavy taxes on the press that were imposed in the colonies. See McConnell, 540 U. S., at 252–253 (opinion of SCALIA, J.); Grosjean, 297 U. S., at 245–248; Near, 283 U. S., at 713–714. The great debates between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists over our founding document were published and expressed in the most important means of mass communication of that era—newspapers owned by individuals. See McIn tyre, 514 U. S., at 341–343; id., at 367 (THOMAS, J., con curring in judgment). At the founding, speech was open, comprehensive, and vital to society’s definition of itself; there were no limits on the sources of speech and knowl edge. See B. Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution 5 (1967) (“Any number of people could join in such proliferating polemics, and rebuttals could come from all sides”); G. Wood, Creation of the American Republic 1776–1787, p. 6 (1969) (“[I]t is not surprising that the intellectual sources of [the Americans’] Revolutionary thought were profuse and various”). The Framers may have been unaware of certain types of speakers or forms of