Government CREATES corporations, and it is Government that requires management to maximize profits on penalty of liability. Therefore, Government can condition that creation as it sees fit, including by restrictions on corporate speech that would be impermissible if applied to individuals. Freedom of Speech isn't implicated, because corporations are creatures of, not parties to, the social contract.
Non-profits: By the same token, government can constitutionally limit the speech of non-profits. However, I think that the protections of Freedom of Association and Freedom to Petition (but not Freedom of Speech) should limit their ability to do so with respect to non-profit corporations formed FOR THE PURPOSE of political speech (the ACLU, Sierra Club and NRA, for instance).
Thus shareholders' speech rights remain unfettered--if they want to spend their money to support the corporation, they can organize a PAC for the purpose; but the corporation cannot fund it directly out of its own coffers.
Labor unions are the same as corporations for this purpose. They are organized to maximize the bargaining power of their membership vis-a-vis their employers, not for political speech.
As for news and broadcasting corporations, there you have the fourth prong of the First Amendment, Freedom of the Press. This is inherently a fuzzier line, as it is certainly conceivable that the corporate owner of a newspaper would direct coverage to be slanted in a way that favors its corporate interests. But it is a line that is well within the capacity of the courts to police. Alternatively, a solution would be to return to the traditional rule: limited-purpose corporations, such that a manufacturing company cannot own a media company; or better-still, limitations on media ownership so that a corporate-controlled newspaper faces sufficient competition from papers that are not so controlled or are controlled by corporations with other interests.
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Non-profits: By the same token, government can constitutionally limit the speech of non-profits. However, I think that the protections of Freedom of Association and Freedom to Petition (but not Freedom of Speech) should limit their ability to do so with respect to non-profit corporations formed FOR THE PURPOSE of political speech (the ACLU, Sierra Club and NRA, for instance).
Thus shareholders' speech rights remain unfettered--if they want to spend their money to support the corporation, they can organize a PAC for the purpose; but the corporation cannot fund it directly out of its own coffers.
Labor unions are the same as corporations for this purpose. They are organized to maximize the bargaining power of their membership vis-a-vis their employers, not for political speech.
As for news and broadcasting corporations, there you have the fourth prong of the First Amendment, Freedom of the Press. This is inherently a fuzzier line, as it is certainly conceivable that the corporate owner of a newspaper would direct coverage to be slanted in a way that favors its corporate interests. But it is a line that is well within the capacity of the courts to police.
Alternatively, a solution would be to return to the traditional rule: limited-purpose corporations, such that a manufacturing company cannot own a media company; or better-still, limitations on media ownership so that a corporate-controlled newspaper faces sufficient competition from papers that are not so controlled or are controlled by corporations with other interests.