Blogger! Who the heck do you think you are?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/07/AR2007030702454.html

As an award-winning journalist, who was also sued for $10 million in a prior life, I have been asked if I missed working in the media. Recently, I said no, I’m kinda back at it.

But am I really? Is a Blogger a journalist? Or just a geek, as I have also been called. Are we who read and write on this forum legitimate, or something far less than that with little or no First Amendment protection.

We are beginning to learn more about a community of 3 million active blogs in the United States. Fully 87% of online users have at one time used the internet to carry out research on a scientific topic or concept and 40 million adults use the internet as their primary source of news and information about science.

Far less are Bloggers, but the number is growing. A 2006 Pew Foundation study found that 13% of people have created an online journal or blog, up from 9% in 2005. The study also found that 39% of people have read someone else’s blog (up from 27% in 2005).

So we’re not normal – we knew that already. But our numbers are growing. In the mid-term Congressional elections blogs like: dailykos.com and bluestate.com combined news with opinions (as popular right sights like Drudge had done before) and claimed to help raise millions to shift power on Capitol Hill. Etalkinghead.com lists a total of 504 political blogs (147 conservative, 144 liberal).

But unlike Las Vegas, what is said here isn’t meant to stay here. Therein lies the controversy. Is a blogger free to exercise comment with First Amendment free press protections? While he or she probably doesn’t carry a press pass, should they be able to count on the Constitution?

I’ll use this developing definition from Wikepedia (ugh!) because of the Soapbox reference:

A political blog is a common type of blog that comments on politics. In liberal democracies, the right to criticize the government without interference is considered an important element of free speech. In other jurisdictions bloggers use the uncensored nature of the internet to bypass state controlled news media but as a result may find themselves persecuted.

Political blogs often have a clearly stated political bias. Although mainstream media news is often presented as impartial, bloggers believe that it does in many cases have a hidden political agenda. Stating political bias at the outset is therefore seen as being more honest. On the other hand, blogs are often seen as being too anonymous and lacking in factual reliability to be trustworthy.

However, they can serve as a soapbox for opinions not represented in mainstream media.

Linked is the story of the jailed Josh Wolf (pictured above). He is being cast by some journalists as a young champion of the First Amendment, jailed for taking a lonely stand against heavy-handed federal prosecutors.

A 24-year-old blogger, Wolf spent more than six months behind bars in California -- the longest contempt-of-court term ever served by someone in the media -- for refusing to turn over a videotape he shot of a violent San Francisco demonstration against a Group of Eight summit meeting. A U.S. District Judge ordered him released in April. And on July 4 of last year, he announced his intent to run for Mayor of San Francisco.

Federal prosecutors going after an arson case want Wolf’s tape of the anarchists protest in San Francisco in 2005. Wolf has refused to turn over the tape. The federal government took over the case from state authorities. There is shield law protection for journalists at the California state level, but not at the federal level.

Read the linked story on this and blog your take on whether or not you’d issue Wolf, me or yourself a press pass and first amendment protections.

By the way, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales didn’t fire the federal prosecutor who put Wolf in jail…But that’s another story.