Bill would protect bloggers alongside journalists

Ars Technica: New bill would give bloggers same shield law protection as journalists

The House of Representatives has amended the Free Flow of Information Act
of 2007 to include provisions to protect bloggers from being required to divulge
their sources under certain situations in the same way as journalists. Instead
of requiring journalists to be tied to a news organization, the bill now defines
"journalism" to focus more on the function of the job: "the
gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing,
reporting, or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national,
or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination
to the public."

Introduced last week by Representative Rick Boucher (D-VA), the bill is meant
to offer a federal version of reporter "shield" laws that are in
place in some 32 states in the US. Legislation at state level has struggled
in the past to determine exactly how to define journalism, with bloggers who
don’t often write for traditional news organizations finding themselves in
a murky gray area. However, in 2006, a California court ruled
in favor of two rumor sites (often considered "blogs")—AppleInsider
and Powerpage—after they divulged details about unreleased Apple products.
The ruling concluded that there was no relevant legal distinction between
journalistic blogging and journalism when it came to the shield law.

That’s exactly as it should be: It’s the act of journalism that should be protected, not the journalist. But will this bill go anywhere? I’d be surprised if it does. The idea of a national shield law for journalists has been floating around forever.

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.