Apple Forces Blogs to Reveal Sources

If journalistic protection doesn't cover websites I wonder if any news reported offline and also online by the same reporter would fall under that? In which case that has pretty huge implications for all media sites.

how the hell does journalistic protection not cover web sites????

Says that Apple are assholes

It is astonishing, you'd think they'd be grateful, and appreciative...

This is why I just make up the new. hehe

This will be a very important ruling. Apple's argument is that these sites aren't protected because they aren't "legimitate press". Begs the question, what makes you "legitimate press"... I'd argue Think Secret is. Will be interesting.

They've now filed for a dismissal

Kleinberg said journalistic protections do not cover Web sites

I can't get past that line. I am in shock.

Good article at nytimes.com that sums up the issues pretty well. (damn registration required)

Attempting to draw a distinction based on the medium used by the blogger or reporter is misguided, said Jack Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School (also a blogger). "In 15 years, there may be no clear distinction between reporters on the one hand and bloggers on the other," he said.

Yet if recognizing a privilege for bloggers means that everyone online can maintain that they are journalists, judges may conclude that rather than giving everyone the privilege, no one should have it. That possibility worries reporters, who could find themselves at new risk for what they write or broadcast.

Are bloggers journalists?

This discussion came up before here at TW about CES, and this point was made in it

And for different reasons the judge in CA is juggling with the same basic question

the definition of journalist doesn't depend on where they publish it depends on what they do - I agree I'm not a journalist just because I might happen to have a blog button on ThreadWatch but there are some certainly online reporters who are journalists - and saying that just because the publish online their sources don't have confidentiality makes no sense.

IMO the better judgement would be that you aren't a journalist without being a card carrying member of one of the unions or organisations. Yes fine you shouldn't be forced to join a union but if you want to be writing inciteful exposes then it isn't a high price to pay to protect your sources.

Once again a judge opens their mouth without engaging brain first I think.

If you define a journalist as someone who has joined a union, then I suspect that unions (the Equity for actors) then use it to keep numbers down as much as for accrediting "proper" journalists.

We could agree that "just because I might happen to have a blog button on ThreadWatch" does not make me journalist

But I still struggle with how society can one offer bloggers the same protection as journalists, without opening the floodgates to allowing any blogger to publish any slanderous garbage and plead a sort of bloggers 5 amendment in refusing to identify the source - no matter how spurious that source might have been

I know this particular case is about bloggers and honestly I doubt many bloggers genuinely break news, certainly not of an earth shattering, privacy requiring type.

is much broader than bloggers. I don' think you can (or even should) offer bloggers the same protection as journalists but I think you can offer online journalists the same protection as offline ones, whether they're using a private blog or writing for the BBC.

If you define a journalist as someone who has joined a union, then I suspect that unions (the Equity for actors) then use it to keep numbers down as much as for accrediting "proper" journalists.

Where I live the government requires that all journalists join a particular union to be accredited. As you might imagine seen as the government controls this union through proxies the quality of reporting is very low or even scandalous. I don’t think this is a road you want to go down.

Actually, the NUJ (UK National Union of Journalists) card used to be used as a quasi-official document (I think I've still got one from years ago floating around here somewhere) and it used to be a pretty good gatekeeper until the newspaper unions suffered their decline in influence.

It's only partly about blogs vs. print - are you a journalist if you write a column for your local supermarket free paper? Is Gordon Strachan (UK soccer manager) a journalist because he writes a column for the Guardian?

Journalists are - largely - qualified in one form or another, and work in some form of journalism. There is at least a pretence of objectivity. Blogging has other motivations and is (IMO) thus more akin to being a columnist even at its closest approach to news.

(And, yes, all those qualifications blow holes in my arguments, but that is because the lines have been blurred since my day as to what "news" actually is... What is a newspaper?)

http://chuqui.typepad.com/teal_sunglasses/2005/03/even_more_on_th.html

This guy probably doesn't understand journos - if he did he would at least put a paragraph break in the rant.

This guy doesn't get the fact that the press have a job to be adversarial. They have to get the story that the company doesn't want them to have. Especially, the ultra-secretive Apple. It is the company's job to control the story.

Having an adversarial press is good for all of us. You now see all the American news networks apologizing for not being adversarial enough in the run up to the Gulf war (FoxNews is not a news network, it's a comedy channel!). What were Woodward and Bernstein supposed to say to Deep Throat - "don't speak to us, you will be breaking all sorts of non-disclosure agreements"

Some conflict should exist between press and corporate marketing/PR types because the title of Seth Godin's book explains it all.

That's my edited rant.....