Tuesday, January 28, 2014

"the United States Congress, in a draft of a Federal shield law, defines a journalist as “one who works for a traditional media organization for pay or gain”"

"The dilemma is precisely because of a lack of precision on who are in fact and in law - journalists. In fact, separate definition on who is a journalist indicates a lack of consensus even from those who profess to practice the profession. 

 For instance, the United States Congress, in a draft of a Federal shield law, defines a journalist as “one who works for a traditional media organization for pay or gain”, a definition adopted as well by the UNESCO. 

 This will exclude bloggers altogether from the protection of the proposed shield law. On the hand, the Human Rights Committee in its General Comment, defines “it is a function shared by wide variety of actors, including professionals full time reporters and analysts, as well as bloggers and others who engage in forms of self-publications in print, on the internet, or elsewhere”.
But outside the definition of who a journalist is, the actual distinction between a regular media outfit and bloggers is the existence of a hierarchy of editorial controls to ensure accuracy in the news and fairness in commentary. This is why traditional journalists themselves sometimes scoff at the notion that “just about anyone can be a journalist”. In fact, Philippine jurisprudence even distinguishes between the amount of latitude given to the media in making factual errors depending on whether it is a “weekly” or a “daily”, with the latter being given wider latitude for mistakes.
The rise of microblogging Universal McCannBut all these miss the point. There is protection accorded by the bill of rights not just to freedom of the press, but to freedom of expression in general. The normative values of these two freedoms are identical: to discern the truth and to facilitate “open, robust and even virulent discussion of pubic issues”. If both freedoms have the same normative content, why should the courts distinguish between an input to the market place of ideas coming from one who earns a living by it and one who does so anyway as a public duty?
The US Court of Appeal’s decisions, in my view, correctly refused a distinction between institutional media and bloggers because to recognize such would also violate the equal protection clause. This is another constitutional guarantee that those similarly situated will be treated alike. Had the court limited the protection of freedom of expression to professional journalists alone, it would send the message that only professional journalists can contribute to the public debate on public issues. This is contrary to the basic tenet that freedom of expression is a human right and not just a right of journalists.
In any case, the fact that journalists are paid and bloggers are not does not constitute a real basis for distinction. In Abrams, Holmes wrote; “the true test of truth is the power of a thought to be accepted in the market place of ideas”. Certainly, Holmes did not write that only paid journalists could contribute to this market."

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