‘Is A Blogger A Journalist?’ Legal Debate Back On

The question of whether a blogger should be treated the same way as a journalist is back on the agenda in the USA, and over the same legal issue as the recent case in Oregon.

Last month there was a great deal of coverage and debate over the case of blogger Crystal Cox in which a district court judge ruled that she wasn’t a journalist and therefore couldn’t decline to reveal her source in a defamation case under the protection of Oregon’s shield laws.

Now the issue is under scrutiny again, this time in Illinois and in the tech sector.

On Friday, Cook County Circuit Court Judge, Michael R. Panter, ruled that the technology website, TechnoBuffalo.com, is not a “news medium” under Illinois law and therefore must reveal the anonymous source who sent it details and an image of the new Motorola Droid Bionic phone several weeks before it was due to launch. Technobuffalo went ahead and published the details (in August) and now they and their blogger are being sued.

The case is being brought by the packaging company for the new Motorola smartphone, who believe the source of the leak was one of their employees and want to charge him or her too. Reporting the case, the Chicago Sun Times quotes TechBuffalo’s laywer, Elizabeth Bradshaw:

We believe this writer has the same rights as any journalist. He's not with a newspaper or television station or a magazine, but he works for a site that provides news daily and has 1 million page views per month. We're going to fight this. This is 2012 and so much of our news comes in electronic form.

In his summing up the judge said:

This is a fast-evolving issue facing courts everywhere. The scope and variety of electronic communication is a challenge in many areas of law.

He certainly got that right. This is an issue that is bound to return over and over until lawmakers take up the challenge to define what does and does not constitute news-making online.

Image: Kingstonist