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Originally Posted by dksuddeth
not to threadjack, but in a constitutional aspect can you explain why this is?
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Ubertuber - if this is a threadjack, please accept my apologies (and please don't "moderate" me out of existence), but...
The 1st Amendment warrants the protection of a free press but does not define what a free press is. The issue now is whether or not a blogger, who is unpaid and self publishes, is actually a journalist. On the one hand, you can have far left and far right bloggers out there deliberately publishing misinformation at the direction of co-conspiritors, and then you can have concerned citizens publishing misdeeds and quasi-legal actions by local politicians (see Knoxville, TN and Venice, FL for excellent examples). If I had links to the two bloggers that I'm referrencing archived, I'd post them, but frankly I don't have time to go back and find them. If you want me to, pm me, and I'll see if I can dig anything up. Remember, the BoR sets up the press as a special class deserving of special priviledges - for instance, as a nonjournalist, you can be forced to reveal your sources for information.