Hear no evil, see no evil, blog no evil.

By Rachael Dalton-Taggart

In an article in October 10, 2005 in Editor and Publisher Magazine (http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001263585) US Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind) a co-sponsor of the proposed federal Shield Law is quoted as saying that Bloggers will “probably not” be considered journalists under a proposed new federal Shield Law. The law is designed to protect journalists under freedom of the press.

The Senator said “As to who is a reporter, this will be a subject of debate as this bill goes farther along," in response to a question from Washington Post Deputy Managing Editor Milton Coleman. "Are bloggers journalists or some of the commercial businesses that you here would probably not consider real journalists? Probably not, but how do you determine who will be included in this bill?"

The article identifies a ‘covered’ person as “"any entity that disseminates information by print, broadcast, cable, satellite, mechanical, photographic, electronic, or other means and that publishes a newspaper, book, magazine, or other periodical in print or electronic form; operates a radio or television station (or network of such stations), cable system, or satellite carrier, or channel or programming service for any such station, network, system, or carrier; or operates a news agency or wire service."

Our thoughts: We don’t think that defining someone as a ‘blogger’ is precise enough. For example, how do you differentiate one from another?
To use a real life example: - Ralph Grabowski (http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/) and Randall Newton (www.aecnews.com), both highly respected journalists in the CAD industry happen to use Blog technology as a vehicle for their work because the medium is effective and affordable. Shaan Hurley (http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/) works for Autodesk and blogs issues that are near and dear to Autodesk. No offense intended to Shaan, but I do not regard him as a journalist mostly because of his paid – and acknowledged – affiliation to Autodesk.

But even then, he is still ‘disseminating information’ in a published form as defined above, so I am being a presumptive b*tch (nothing new there).

What is the answer? Risky as it may sound, a form of Equity card for journalists may be the answer – applicable to anybody employed by recognized press establishments and also to anybody who has somehow ‘earned’ their stripes.

Problem with this is that it allows an institution to determine what a journalist is and develops an elite among the many – but that is surely preferable to allowing the government to define what a journalist is.