84 CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N Opinion of STEVENS, J. govern themselves. The majority seems oblivious to the simple truth that laws such as §203 do not merely pit the anticorruption interest against the First Amendment, but also pit competing First Amendment values against each other. There are, to be sure, serious concerns with any effort to balance the First Amendment rights of speakers against the First Amendment rights of listeners. But when the speakers in question are not real people and when the appeal to “First Amendment principles” depends almost entirely on the listeners’ perspective, ante, at 1, 48, it becomes necessary to consider how listeners will actu­ ally be affected. In critiquing Austin’s antidistortion rationale and cam­ paign finance regulation more generally, our colleagues place tremendous weight on the example of media corpora­ tions. See ante, at 35–38, 46; ante, at 1, 11 (opinion of ROBERTS, C. J.); ante, at 6 (opinion of SCALIA, J.). Yet it is not at all clear that Austin would permit §203 to be ap­ plied to them. The press plays a unique role not only in the text, history, and structure of the First Amendment but also in facilitating public discourse; as the Austin Court explained, “media corporations differ significantly from other corporations in that their resources are devoted to the collection of information and its dissemination to the public,” 494 U. S., at 667. Our colleagues have raised some interesting and difficult questions about Congress’ authority to regulate electioneering by the press, and about how to define what constitutes the press. But that is not the case before us. Section 203 does not apply to media corporations, and even if it did, Citizens United is not a media corporation. There would be absolutely no reason to consider the issue of media corporations if the majority did not, first, transform Citizens United’s as­ applied challenge into a facial challenge and, second, invent the theory that legislatures must eschew all “iden­ tity”-based distinctions and treat a local nonprofit news