Can Bloggers Be Legally Considered Journalists?
Seeing as how the way we share information and communicate is rapidly changing I think that there are couple of questions that are now very important to discuss. First question, “what is a journalist?” Though some of the lopsided reporting I’ve seen in the past has prompted me to ask this question I never got around to looking up the publicly accepted technical definition. I used a handy google search to get a few definitions (see below).
My next question is, “what is media?” I always thought that media was a means by which information is conveyed, ya know, television,newspaper,magazine,radio and now blogs. But I guess not, atleast according to one Oregon judge.
An Oregon resident, Crystal Cox, has been sued for defamation by a investment firm and ordered to pay $2.5 million after she used her blog to report insider tips about practices from that same firm. Cox was asked to give up her sources and argued that she was covered by the Oregon Shield Law. A judge ruled that “Oregon Shield Law” did not apply to the defendent since there was nothing in the public record connecting her to “media”. SxePhil covered the subject in the video above. I’ll be looking further into this myself. This just has me shaking my head.
Very efficiently written story. It will be valuable to anybody who usess it, as well as yours truly
. Keep doing what you are doing – can’r wait to read more posts.
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The core of your writing whilst appearing reasonable at first, did not work perfectly with me after some time. Someplace within the paragraphs you actually managed to make me a believer but only for a very short while. I however have a problem with your jumps in logic and one would do nicely to help fill in all those breaks. If you can accomplish that, I will surely end up being amazed.