Bloggers and shield laws

Interesting case where an Oregon judge said a blogger wasn't covered by shield laws. I'm not a fan of them myself because it gives the media special privileges they shouldn't be entitled to.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/if-we-are-all-journalists-should-we-all-be-protected-12082011.html

 

Didn't we do this thing five years ago in San Francisco?

 

Yes, but it was limited to California.

Dan Gillmore brings up the case in his thoughts on the matter.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/dec/08/crystal-cox-case-digital-media

This is a great graf that sidetracks a bit from the core issue, but hits at the increasing use of anonymous sources.

 

Although I worry a lot about anonymous sources, I wonder if this policy would actually have the even worse unintended consequence of pushing even more anonymous sourcing into "background". Reporters clearly get spun all the time by sources that influence their thinking on a topic but don't actually get quoted in the story--not even as anonymous sources. If we ban anonymous sources, we're only likely to see more of that. And by eliminating the few indications we have about where a reporter's thinking on a topics comes from, it makes it even more difficult to discern where it's coming from.