aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Blogger journalist
LATimes media critic David Shaw says bloggers are not journalists:
Are bloggers entitled to the same constitutional protection as traditional print and broadcast journalists?
Given the explosive growth of the blogosphere, some judge is bound to rule on the question one day soon, and when he does, I hope he says the nation’s estimated 8 million bloggers are not entitled to the same constitutional protection as traditional journalists - essentially newspaper, magazine, radio and television reporters and editors.
Shaw seems to believe that the First Amendment and its subsidiary protections belong to the credentialed employees of the established corporate press and not to the great unwashed. I suggest that he-or one of the four experienced editors who touched his copy-research the history of the First Amendment. They’ll learn that the Founders wrote it precisely to protect Tom, Dick, and Matt and the wide-eyed pamphleteers and the partisan press of the time. The professional press, which Shaw believes so essential in protecting society, didn’t even exist until the late 19th century.
If blogs err, Shaw has my permission to shame them. If they libel him, he has my blessing to sue. I suspect that the more he treats blogs like the press the more he will come to realize that they are the press, and that the petty attempt he’s made with his column to commandeer the First Amendment for the corporate media will only wreak the damage to society and the press that he so fears.
I’m left confused. I side with Shafer more than Shaw. But I’ve taken the position that bloggers are not journalists and don’t need the special protection of press shield laws here, here, here and here. I would prefer instead legal recognition and full First Amendment protection of bloggers as bloggers. Congress carved out of cable law a spot for Public Access Television, how about something like that?
I’ve never liked that the First Amendment has been effectively taken from the individual and handed over to the corporate media, so I should naturally be on the side of bloggers as journalists. What I don’t like is the abusive manipulation I see from the use of anonymous sources (neither does Jack Shafer) and I don’t like the idea of its spread to bloggers.
