I’m not a legal expert, so I need help here: Even if I’m a student journalist or occasional blogger, what’s stopping me from calling myself an “independent contractor” for wherever and thus falling under the law’s protection? How difficult would it be for a few lawyers to come up with a simple, generic form that legally makes me a contractor for a Web site — no money involved or anything, just a formal step? “X hereby is expected to attempt to try to write no fewer than 1 word for Y” or something like that.

I’m troubled by both the failure to protect part-time or occasional journalists, but I am even more struck by the word “and” between parts (I) and (II). An employee or affiliate of a purely digital entity (say, the Huffington Post) that does not publish “a newspaper, book, magazine, or other periodical” is not protected, unless “programming service” means “blog”.

So does this mean that newspapers that shut down their printing presses and go only online will not be protected either? Scary how this stuff works its way into the mix.

As someone who worked in traditional print media for 20 years as a staff photographer, and has since worked as a F/T blogger for the last three, this is about the stupidest framework for the shield law that I can imagine.

Any law that effectively defines journalism by the specific medium which conveys the information will be out of date the day it goes into effect.

BOOOO CHUCK BOOOO

Only comment–besides BOO HISS!–is that Chuck Schumer ain’t no liberal. He’s just a corporate lackey from New York who picked the party that is more likely to hold office in New York.

I was a working journalist for more than 35 years, and I say to hell with a shield law. If I am doing my job and not breaking existing laws, not violating anyone’s constitutional rights (corny as that may sound in the 21st century), why do I need a shield law?

“Citizen journalists,” my ass. It’s time to professionalize journalism. If you want to be considered a journalist and gain First Amendment protection reasonably afforded a journalist, get some training that means something. Earn it and don’t give me that Thomas Paine crap. Journalism as a profession is going down the toilet at an accelerating speed. In fact, it’s not even a profession, it’s a J-O-B. If you haven’t graduated from an accredited university with a degree in journalism with at least one course in ethics and media law, by what standard, if any, are you even calling yourself a journalist? Is Diane Dimond a journalist? Hell, no, but she calls herself one. As far as shielding bloggers, screw that. No one even knows who they are. Journalism is in Wild West mode and needs regulating. If it doesn’t regulate itself, I see the time when the government will have to step in and regulate it in some way, thereby doing damage to the First Amendment. However, that amendment says that “Congress” shall pass no laws abridging press freedom; the President or the Supreme Court could certainly do something. I’m glad I saw this article. I’m going to write to my senator, Diane Feinstein, and urge her to stick to her guns. Not everyone is a “journalist” just because they, or even their employer, calls themselves a journalist. Poor Walter Cronkite and other giants of real journalism; they’re spinning in their graves.

License the right to protection? Who gets to authorize the license? Where would one have to apply and who decides thumb up or thumb down. The emperor?

Earn First Amendment Protection?

It seems to me the First Amendment, as well as the other nine, are rights, not privileges. They aren’t things to be earned. They aren’t up for licensing. I can understand concerns with respect to declining professionalism, but I don’t think perverting our First Amendment Right to a free press is any kind of solution. I do not think the cause of this decline has anything to do with bloggers or the First Amendment. I suspect it has more to do with the fact that since the 80s PR firms realized the best way to be effective was to hire the good news people away from the papers. They were terribly under paid and over worked. If anything would raise the professionalism of media “professionals,” it would be to make half of what their counterparts who work as PR consultants.

I don’t see how restricting the scope of the First Amendment would solve the problem or how it is even Constitutional. It would seem to me the fundamental nature of freedom of the press is that the government can’t infringe on the freedom of the press. Isn’t defining who are or what is the press infringing on that freedom?