And so are you, for that matter. “The three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held unanimously that there is no difference between a journalist for a media outlet and another speaker when it comes to First Amendment protections.”
“The protections of the First Amendment do not turn on whether the defendant was a trained journalist, formally affiliated with traditional news entities, engaged in conflict-of-interest disclosure, went beyond just assembling others’ writings, or tried to get both sides of a story. As the Supreme Court has accurately warned, a First Amendment distinction between the institutional press and other speakers is unworkable,” Hurwitz wrote.
The court has ruled, contrary to how (far too many) Democrats feel, that there can be no cartel on first amendment speech. Efforts by progressives to separate bloggers by defining the speech cartel should fall on deaf ears. And anyone seeking to sue a blogger for defamation must meet the same standards as any speaker; they must prove “malice and negligence.” So Bloggers and the press get the same protections. Any Journalist “shield Law” could not exclude bloggers.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled verbal MMA match, which is already in progress.
Rick Moran – American Thinker | Josh Gerstein – POLITIO
