The first such case I’ve heard:
The New Hampshire Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit that calls into question the legal protections available to independent Web sites that cover news.
The case involves mortgage lender Implode-Explode, a Las Vegas-based site launched in 2007 that publishes stories about the meltdown of the mortgage industry. The court did not make a final decision on the case Wednesday, but one of its options could be to send the case back to the lower court for further review and litigation on specific points of law.
The dispute began in November 2008 when The Mortgage Specialists Inc (MSI) won a temporary injunction requesting that a confidential document, “2007 Loan Chart,” be removed from Implode-Explode’s site, ml-implode.com. MSI also requested the identity of the source and of a commenter, “Brianbattersby,” who they allege made defamatory comments about the company and its president.
Implode-Explode removed both the loan chart and the comments, but refused to either provide the identity of their anonymous sources or promise to refrain from posting the document again in the future.
At issue: is a blogger a journalist? If you read the rest of the article, it does appear that the blog obtained valid information indicating illegal practices at the lender which were then confirmed upon regulatory investigation. This is what journalism is supposed to be about – finding out what is going on, and then reporting it to the public. The tip off to the blogger does seem to have been a leaked document the blogger did not have a right to see – but journalists are always getting documents they don’t have a right see, so no great problem provided the courts recognize the blogger as a journalist.
The lender is arguing that blogging is not journalism. But, in my view, it is – what I and the rest of the bloggers do is report the news: often culling from several sources and then putting our own narrative to the data, all we’re doing is what the old-line journalists do. Heck, some of us even ferret out new information and report it – being investigative journalists in our blogging work. If the lender wins the case, then anyone who is mad at a blogger will be able to shut the blog down – and while this might please the MSM, it would do great damage to our liberty.
One of the great safety valves of American liberty is the internet – what we feared might become the means of Orwellian control over our lives has become, instead, the means by which citizens keep in rapid touch with one another and bring massive, instant pressure on elected officials. If we lose this ability then the political masters of America will have their power cemented that much more completely.
Blogs For Victory 