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« It's A Wonder | Main | Bredesen Unveils Alternate Budget if TennCare "Reform" Stalls » March 10, 2005Is the First Amendment Only for Journalists?JournalismJobs.com, a resource for job-hunting journalists that also from time to time lists good opportunities for freelancers, is currently running a web poll asking "Should bloggers have the same legal rights as journalists?" I just grabbed a screen shot of the results, and they rather disheartening for this journalist-turned blogger: More than half of the respondents, who would mostly be mainstream journalists, think bloggers should not have the same legal rights as journalism.
And just what legal rights are we talking about here? The First Amendment, and all of the legal protections that courts have ruled flow from it. I don't know how many people have responded to the web poll at JournalismJobs.com - the website doesn't reveal that data. But if there is even one journalist in America who believes that rights and legal protections derived from the First Amendment should be granted only to a handful of Americans in that elite group called "journalists" rather than to that other elite group called "Americans," it is one too many. American journalists have lost the respect of the American people over the past two decades. Telling millions of Americans who blog - and the millions more who will be blogging soon - that the First Amendment is the exclusive preserve of journalists hardly seems a way to get it back. UPDATE: Michael Silence, the Knoxville News Sentinel's in-house blogger of blog-related stuff, has more, including links to some good related commentary. Silence recently very aptly described the blogosphere as "a collection of voices." The authors of the First Amendment intended for it to protect the right of American voices to speak. Posted in Blogging & Journalism
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Very revealing: both of the snobbery, and of the desperation of the journalism establishment. Wouldn't it be nice if they could have us thrown in jail for holding their feet to the fire when they are caught passing off propaganda and lies as news? Posted by: Van Helsing at March 10, 2005 11:47 AMLook, Bill, you're not sophisticated enough to understand and recognize newsworthy events as they happen. And, if by some miracle, you DID recognize what is called "News," you are certainly not intelligent enough to grasp the true meaning of the event and it's myriad nuances. Only Journalists (Licensed and Bonded), forged by the Hades-like fires of Journalism School and a brief unpaid internship, are qualified, nay, CAPABLE, of providing this valued service to the unwashed masses, who, left to their own devices, would surely drown in a sea of their own ignorance. Posted by: Ivan at March 10, 2005 02:51 PMPost a comment
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