Skip to main content

Legal status of bloggers debated / Journalists' shield claimed in response to Apple's lawsuit

It's a tough call...for every Ted Roche, who provides links to valuable information, there's a Madge or a ______ ( put your own name in here)....who is simply providing their own ....

Stop - even Ted provides his own commentary on his posts...if I go to a journalism school, does that make me any better?

I don't think so - yes, journalists should be more vigilant but many times, columnists are considered to be the same as journalists- are they really? If columnists are allowed to be protected, then so should bloggers.

Because what is a blog? - it is a column by someone who gives a damn.

Legal status of bloggers debated / Journalists' shield claimed in response to Apple's lawsuit

Comments

Ted Roche said…
I'm not sure what the law i in Canada, but the U.S. system is a mess (surprised?). The U.S. Consititutions;'s Bill of Rights provides for "freedom of the press" in Amendment 1:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.billofrights.html

The tradition that journalists have a right to protect their sources to whom they have given a promise of confidentiality is not a Constitutional Right, but it is one that is granted by state "shield laws" in some but not all states. While the confidentiality provisions of client-attorney or doctor-patient privileges can be tested by the standard that the attorney or doctor is licensed to practice their professsion, there is no professsional licensing of journalists and so I think the question of where to draw the line is more difficult.

More on my blog... http://radio.weblogs.com/0117767
March 12, 2005 at 8:56 AM
Andrew MacNeill said…
Likely a mess in most places - I think clouding the waters is the thought that a device was stolen to get the news. Theft is wrong (even for journalists!) - if this is true, then they certainly shouldn't be protected.

Have you posted more on your blog? I only found the Dan Gilmor stuff.
March 12, 2005 at 10:43 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Elevating Project Specifications with Three Insightful ChatGPT Prompts

For developers and testers, ChatGPT, the freely accessible tool from OpenAI, is game-changing. If you want to learn a new programming language, ask for samples or have it convert your existing code. This can be done in Visual Studio Code (using GitHub CoPilot) or directly in the ChatGPT app or web site.  If you’re a tester, ChatGPT can write a test spec or actual test code (if you use Jest or Cypress) based on existing code, copied and pasted into the input area. But ChatGPT can be of huge value for analysts (whether system or business) who need to validate their needs. There’s often a disconnect between developers and analysts. Analysts complain that developers don’t build what they asked for or ask too many questions. Developers complain that analysts haven’t thought of obvious things. In these situations, ChatGPT can be a great intermediary. At its worst, it forces you to think about and then discount obvious issues. At best, it clarifies the needs into documented requirements. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

I’m Supposed to Know

https://programmingzen.com/im-supposed-to-know/ Great post for developers who are struggling with unrealistic expectations of what they should know and what they shouldn't. Thirty-forty years ago, it was possible to know a lot about a certain environment - that environment was MS-DOS (for non Mac/UNIX systems). . There was pretty much only a handful of ways to get things going. Enter networking. That added a new wrinkle to how systems worked. Networks back then were finicky. One of my first jobs was working on a 3COM + LAN and it then migrated to LAN Manager. Enter Windows or the graphical user interface. The best depiction of the complexity Windows (OS/2, Windows NT, etc) introduced that I recall was by Charles Petzold (if memory serves) at a local user group meeting. He invited a bunch of people on the stage and then acted as the Windows "Colonel", a nice play on kernel. Each person had a role but to complete their job they always had to pass things back to h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Respect

Respect is something humans give to each other through personal connection. It’s the bond that forms when we recognize something—or someone—as significant, relatable, or worthy of care. This connection doesn’t have to be limited to people. There was an  article  recently that described the differing attitudes towards AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini (formerly Bard). Some people treat them like a standard search while others form a sort of personal relationship — being courteous, saying “please” and “thank you”. Occasionally, people share extra details unrelated to their question, like, ‘I’m going to a wedding. What flower goes well with a tuxedo?’ Does an AI “care” how you respond to it? Of course not — it reflects the patterns it’s trained on. Yet our interaction shapes how these tools evolve, and that influence is something we should take seriously. Most of us have all expressed frustration when an AI “hallucinates”. Real or not, the larger issue is that we have hi...
Post a Comment
Read more