Does the Constitution protect bloggers?
David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times provides the usual arguments that the blogosphere and journalism are different animals in an(other) essay about how bloggers aren’t entitled to the same Constitutional protection as journalists. A part of his argument notes the area of mistakes and corrections:
And it’s the institutional safeguards of the traditional media that differentiate them from bloggers and the blogosphere, even if those safeguards sometimes fail. When they do, as they clearly did in the case of several recent media scandals, heads roll.Many bloggers — not all, perhaps not even most — don’t seem to worry much about being accurate. Or fair. They just want to get their opinions — and their “scoops” — out there as fast as they pop into their brains.
If some bloggers don’t employ smart practices, the laws of libel and slander will (and should) come down on them hard. Meanwhile, let’s PLEASE dispose of this notion that somehow a degree — or standing in some institutional society — is what grants people the Constitutional protections written for them.
