Media convergence, journalists bloggings, journalistic bloggers, where the hell is the freaking yardstick?

After reading David Shaw’s article in the 27th March 2005 edition of the LA Times, Jack Shafer’s piece in Slate and the op-ed piece by Philip Meyer, the Knight Professor of Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; I am convinced that there are some basic issues that could be dispensed with immediately and some more complicated issues which requires further soul searching.

The simplest issue is the First Amendment rights of bloggers. Shafer correctly argues that the professional press did not exist at the time when the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution and the subsequent amendments. Hence the first ten amendments are commonly referred to as the "Bill of Rights". Furthermore, everyone, from journalists to bloggers to Tom, Dick and Harry, are entitled to the freedom of speech and thought. The First Amendment protects the rights of anti-war protesters to march in Washington or the rights of anti-abortionists to demonstrate outside the Supreme Court. Secondly, the journalism, unlike law or medicine or accounting, is an occupation which requires no true form of certification, which means all aspiring journalists are in a similar boat to bloggers until they are hired by a media organization.

With greater media convergence, the lines between non-journalistic writers and journalistic writers are increasingly more blurred. Hence the need for a yardstick, otherwise Shafer’s argument concerning the First Amendment would also apply to the Shield Law that currently exists in 31 states. Therein lies my fundamental problem, why would a nation need to enact a Shield Law to protect journalists from overzealous prosecutors when, in an era of media convergence and easier right to publication through the Internet, everyone can be a journalist, in which case, this country needs a Constitutional amendment protecting everyone from revealing any secret sources. The only difference is between a traditional journalist and a blogger is the accreditation by a news organization. If a Shield Law is meant to protect accredited journalists would that extend to his unsanctioned blog? If so, what would the limits be? I think, currently, most bloggers would like to think that they have a high degree of accuracy in their writing. However, some bloggers are highly opinionated and their writing reflects the style of a political talk radio in print. Hence my call for a yardstick to differentiate a web version of talk radio in print asserting the rights of journalistic protect versus a legitimate online journalist, like Slate.

I would argue that a model for any Shield Law should only offer limited protection like the current diplomatic immunity for consular officials from foreign countries in the US. In other words, a Shield Law should only apply to journalists on official assignment with full documentation from the news organization prior to the journalist starting his or her assignment. This documentation could be as simple as a log book documenting every assignment for every journalist with its start date and end dates or something much more formal. A diplomat on holiday in a foreign country not of his assignment is not entitled to diplomatic immunity; any shield law should work in a similar manner for journalists not working on his or her official assignment. Keep in mind, the formalization of diplomatic immunity was to protect intelligence agents working under official cover, usually under the guise of an embassy official. Otherwise, any journalist could claim that one is working on an assignment when, in truth, one is only researching for a possible future assignment.

Philip Meyer's op-ed piece in the 31st March 2005 edition of the USA Today

Don't Fear the Blogger: Will Someone please help the Los Angeles Times' David Shaw get a grip