March 7, 2005

The New York Times > Technology > News Analysis: At a Suit's Core: Are Bloggers Reporters, Too?

This 'who is a reporter' debate will continue to heat up. The core issue is confidential sources and who has the right to protect them. I maintain that a serious, investigative, mainstream blog is every bit as worthy of the privileges accorded to the 'MSM.' In any event, NO ONE, blogger or traditional journalist, should have the legal protection of not revealing a confidential source if the source and the 'reporter' have broken a valid and necessary law in revealing information.

I believe the First Amendment guarantees the right to anyone to speak or publish corporate or governmental information legally obtained. OTH, no person deserves legal cover or confidentiality of sources when breaking a law.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."


"Attempting to draw a distinction based on the medium used by the blogger or reporter is misguided, said Jack Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School (also a blogger). "In 15 years, there may be no clear distinction between reporters on the one hand and bloggers on the other," he said. "It won't just be an either-or, where you have a reporter for The Chicago Tribune on the one hand, and a guy sitting in his pajamas drinking beer on the other."

"As the mainstream media has become more and more corporate and more and more like the governmental and corporate bodies that mainstream journalists used to report on," he said, "a lot of this stuff has fallen now to the bloggers - to do what mainstream folks used to do. It's still serving the exact same purpose: keeping the bad guys honest."



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