Four newspaper companies, two national and two local, are suing the Raleigh-Durham Airport to demand that they be allowed to install newsracks in terminal locations currently considered off-limits.

They should be arguing that the airport is unwisely and irresponsibility interfering with free enterprise. Unfortunately, their argument is that they have a First Amendment right not to have their boxes excluded, and that the availability of their newspapers in private stores in the terminals is insufficient to meet constitutional protections of freedom of the press.

This is a wrongheaded argument. The First Amendment doesn’t have anything to do with whether one kind of business or another can sell newspapers in an airport terminal. Of course, government shouldn?t be allowed to engage in such favoritism, unless there is truly a health or safety concern in a public place. But freedom of the press has nothing to do with it. That concerns the right to publish what you want without governmental interference, a right that extends to every individual or group of individuals, not just media companies.

Best way to get government out of the business of favoring gift shops over newsracks? Privatize the airport, naturally.