By Patricia Lee Sharpe
The Denver Post editorializes on March 19:
Count us among the growing legions who embrace the notion that Web bloggers deserve the same shield-law protections accorded to other journalists.
Evidently the Post is unhappy with the recent case involving Apple Computer. The company sought to uncover the leaker of info about new Apple products by taking some bloggers to court. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg ruled that “trade secrets” do not fall under California shield laws.
The Denver Post sees two problems here.
Worry number one is the notion that the law should extend special protection to trade “secrets,” even those which might involve “detailing everything from product flaws to accounting fraud.” The Post disagrees: “The media’s responsibility is to publish accurate information of broad public interest, not to protect the business interests of private corporations.”
Secondly, insists the Post, it’s not a judges job to determine what is news and what is not. “In a free country, news is what consumers and journalists [including electronic journalists or Bloggers] say it is.”
Noting that the Federal government and some states lack shield-law protection for journalists, the Post laments the fact that even the Colorado law trails the realities of technology. It appears to exclude Internet journalists whose medium is unmentioned on the list of those shielded. The proposed Federal shield-law is also technologically retrograde in so far as it “ignores the blogosphere and covers only established forms of media.” The editorialist believes that there’s a need for “a tech-saving update…before an Internet-related case lands in a Colorado court.”
The editorial concludes:
An increasing number of blogs gather and report news---some of which appears in newspapers or on TV. The most successful enjoy audiences bigger than a large majority of newspapers. As such, they deserve no less protection than their colleagues in traditional media.
WhirledView salutes the Denver Post for its inclusivity and its wisdom.
Those who fear free expression, the nannies, the Biblical inerrantists, the over-classifiers and control-freaks who are positing a multitude of “moral” and “religious” and “patriotic” and “child protection” reasons for censoring movies, radio, textbooks, etc., would like nothing better than to have journalists squabbling over who is authentic or serious or worth protecting.