FECA and freedom of the press
p2p news / p2pnet: Web pages that merely link to articles on newspaper web sites shouldn’t qualify for protection under senator Frank Lugar’s Free Flow of Information Act, says blogger Mike Pence.
Did we say Lugar’s Act? The Editor & Publisher says Pence points out that he was the first author behind the FECA that’s being attributed to Lugar, largely by Lugar.
And the two US politicians also have different views about who’d qualify as a journalist under it.
The relative anonymity afforded to bloggers, “coupled with a certain lack of accountability, as they are not your traditional brick-and-mortar reporters who answer to an editor or publisher” also has the “risk of creating a certain irresponsibility when it comes to accurately reporting information,” opined senator John Cornyn last week.
And Lugar believes bloggers probably wouldn’t be eligible for the act’s protections.
But, says the story, according to congressman Pence who, in addition to being chairman of the US House Conservative Coalition, is also a blogger, blogs would probably have to be considered on a, well, "blog-by-blog" basis and, he told the Inland Press Association, "Frankly, there are some that are out there gathering news”.
Then you have the cut-and-paste brigade.
“There are many people though, who just link to your newspapers,” said Pence. “It would be hard to argue to anyone that privilege applies to those people just because they have a Web site."
Pence says he was moved to write the bill by "the specter of an American journalist spending 85 days in jail," states the Editor & Publisher, referring to New York Times reporter Judith Miller who ended up in jail for refusing to name a source.
"This isn’t about protecting reporters," Pence said of the proposed shield law, adds the story. "This is about protecting the peoples’ right to know."
He doesn’t say if he believes he’d be safe under FECA.
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win
- Mohandas Gandhi
Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local political representatives. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance.
See:-
qualify for protection – Free Flow of Information Act, October 13, 2005
Editor & Publisher – Bill’s Author Says Some Bloggers Would be Protected by Shield Law , October 24, 2005
certain irresponsibility – Bloggers aren’t real reporters, October 20, 2005
October 25th, 2005 at 2:41 am
Yeah information should be free to view no matter what it states.
If I want to put out videos, information, reports, or whatever, it should not be censored in any way.
October 25th, 2005 at 4:03 am
The reporter served time in jail for obstruction of justice – aka hiding her informants of the CIA leak.
Reporters think they are oh-so-great because they report the news. Big F***ing deal.
The government just shouldn’t be providing special favors for people in high places.
PS: If they think Watergate is an excuse for protection, they are wrong. The informant in that case wasn’t breaking the law, he was ratting out the higher ups. In the Rove/Libby case, they possibly commited a crime by releasing the CIA agent’s name.
October 25th, 2005 at 1:41 pm
I’d be interested in a take as to whether or not a bill like this, which affords a certain class of journalists special protections, would be constitutional.
And let’s be clear: the only way to make this bill specifically exclude bloggers is if it’s specifically written to exclude bloggers. In every substantial respect, many bloggers out there are doing things indistinguishable from what “mainstream journalists” do every day. In fact, many of them <i>are</i> journalists.
How would you distinguish between the two? Well, one usually writes for a corporation, and one usually doesn’t. Or one writes in print and the other writes on the web.
Doesn’t sound reasonable to me.