The Lilliputians are at it again.  Mainline media outlets have forgotten that the burden of the First Amendment's freedom of speech clause refers to disagreement.  For this reason the Supreme Court has defined speech very broadly to allow people to express disagreement on clothing and with flags and gestures and pornography(?) - these were all described as protest, i.e. disagreement, with convention, or culture, or the man (er,... I mean white man).  This commendable expansion has allowed for more popular involvement in political issues than ever before in human history.  Add the internet, cell phones, YouTube, and Facebook and we make classical Athens look like a monarchy.  But something has happened.
For some reason, the people who prized protest and disagreement to such a degree that they wanted any and all anti-social behavior labeled as political speech, now see reason to shut down disagreement.  This tendency has revealed itself in numerous, flagrant and public ways in the last year - from canceling heterodox graduation speakers to cries for academic justice against academic freedom.  What seems to be happening is that what protest movements first asked for, an expansion of free speech, was not for the sake of democratizing the public square, but rather for the advancing of a single worldview.  This is proving to be a nasty bait and switch.  What began under the banner of liberalism was actually a measure pursued to impose a vigilant conservatism.  I don't mean by conservatism a certain side of the political aisle, rather I mean a conservative attitude - constrain cultural dialogue in order to force a single set of outcomes.  Thus the protesters of decades past now want to be the status quo.  I do not think that they are drunk on power or influence or popularity (although one can  never count out the power of these things to tempt people), but rather they have a vision of what is morally right.  Nothing good comes from a moral person compromising his/her rightness in order to protect free public discourse.
Here is how it works: people support free speech to challenge unjust power (speaking truth to power) thereby defending the virtue of an open public square.  The protesters come into power and now have an opportunity to create the moral society they wrote about on cardboard signs and esoteric novels and fringe movies.  One must add at this point the fear, among these moral champions, that the bigots of the world are always just about to spring some global plot on freedom and justice, dragging liberal society back to the Republican middle ages.  Then put these people in very homogeneous groups which produce such pure agreement that there is the prima facie understanding that disagreement is ignorance, anti-science (always a good name to call someone whom you fear wants to go back to 14th century Europe), and stupidity.  The result, the once proud denizens of free speech shutting down free speech - this only sounds Orwellian to those who disagree with the status quo.  To the new moral establishment it is simply common sense.
Let me give you one example, out of many.  Cultural leaders of the moral literati hate the Supreme Court's decision on campaign financing.  They are outraged that people can spend money (the medium of exchange used by the world's evil bigots) to buy media space and time to affect campaigns.  A conspiracy so sinister and so bold that they do it right in public (the same way that secret agencies spread chem-trails through airliner wingtips).  This is far worse than increased lead in the atmosphere - people will use money to influence politics!  Of course the wrong people will abuse this system (here say Koch brothers, and big anything except labor, media, and government) while the right people (say 67/69ths of Hollywood, labor unions, and the music industry, minus the country cooks) will be forced to do the very same thing in order to save the day.  Huh?  Is money dangerous to free speech or is it not?  Well, this will confuse you further.  The New York Times is irate with the Supreme Court for unleashing private money to be used in campaigns.  Where is this money spent?... on media outlets like the Grey Lady (or Grey Hound, depending on how you intend to use the metaphor.)  Can you imagine, one of the most respected and popular news outlets in the country, which can print articles from its writers' own perspectives without limit, control, oversight, candor or Supreme Court regulation, wanting to stifle people who have to pay to get the same privilege?  What is that!?  Has anyone calculated the equivalent of how much campaign finance money the NYTimes has spent supporting candidates during elections?  If a private company or individual wanted to access the Times' audience with as much print as the paper itself utilizes, it would cost the GDP of a small nation.  So the paper which supports candidates lavishly and with impunity wants to see restrictions on everybody else...  We should just call it what it is - our moral illuminati are not interested in free speech, but rather with right speech.