Bloggers as Journalists

My Keloland colleagues, David Newquist and Tim Gebhart have some comments on the status of bloggers as journalists.  Tim raises the question in the context of a recent federal bill.

The question of whether bloggers are journalists is raised indirectly by differences in legislation introduced this month in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate to provide certain legal protections to journalists.

Both bills call themselves the Free Flow of Information Act and seek to create a federal "shield law." Broadly speaking, shield laws protect reporters from having to disclose confidential or unpublished information in response to subpoenas or court orders unless certain conditions are met. It has been an ongoing debate for several decades and the advent of blogs adds another layer to the debate.

David Newquist replies:

I am not sure such protections should always be extended to reporters.

I share Professor Newquist’s skepticism, though perhaps for different reasons.  He is concerned that bad people saying bad things will get protections that they do not deserve.  He has this:

For real journalists, shield laws will be a benefit. For those who practice journalistic shysterism, they will shield the mendacious and incompetent and merely self-promoting. Real journalists may have egos, but they are educated and disciplined enough to know the difference between serving their profession and serving their egos.

And this:

While journalism has its sub-par practitioners and needs to be called into account on occasion, for some blogs scurrility and maligning are standard fare. Many are devoted to ad hominem attacks, not the discussion of information.

While it is no doubt true that there are bad journalists and bad bloggers, it is also true that it’s a lot easier to see the faults of the one or the other when they are on the other side.  It is also easier to persuade yourself that an ad hominem attack has taken place when you yourself are the hominem in question. 

This, I think, is the problem with shield laws in general.  They extend legal protections to journalists that are not available to non-journalists.  If a journalist receives information that is relevant to a criminal investigation, he or she might not have to reveal it.  A non-journalist could be compelled to cough up.  But that means that the government has to distinguish between “real journalists” and non-journalists.  It might be tempting to extend such protections to the New York Times, but not, say, to Rush Limbaugh. 

I don’t believe in Professor Newquist’s distinction between real journalists and pseudo-journalists.  During the recent election campaign, the New York Times ran a piece full of innuendo about John McCain.  An affair with a lobbyist was clearly hinted at (nod and wink), but not a bit of real information was supplied.  That was a journalistic scandal, for which the Times was rightly and deeply embarrassed.  But this doesn’t mean that the Times isn’t a “real” newspaper.  It just means that the Times’ editors succumbed to corruption and practiced shoddy journalism.  That’s an important thing to know.  But though I agree with Professor Newquist that “false information is the enemy of a free people,” I don’t think that Government, as an interested party, should decide which information or information brokers, deserve legal protection. 

Bloggers are not “non-real journalists.”  We are amateur journalists.  We don’t have the kind of resources behind us (fact checkers!) that traditional newspapers and newsrooms do, but we have the freedom to say what we damn well think.  It’s true that we depend on the mainstream media for information, and that raises deep concerns in a period when major newspapers are folding almost as fast as banks.  But it’s also true that, in many celebrated cases, us bloggers have kept the mainstream press more honest than it is inclined to be. 

I don’t think that bloggers should have more legal protections than any other citizens have, but I am not sure that “professional journalists” should be treated any differently.