Bill’s Author Says Some Bloggers Would be Protected by Shield Law

Anonymous Patron writes “Bill’s Author Says Some Bloggers Would be Protected by Shield Law Bloggers who actually gather news would be protected under the proposed federal shield law, the legislation’s first author, U.S. Rep. Mike Pence told the Inland Press Association Monday.
“Frankly, there are some that are out there gathering news,” Spence said at Inland’s 120th annual meeting. “There are many people though, who just link to your newspapers. It would be hard to argue to anyone that privilege applies to those people just because they have a Web site.””

October 25, 2005 by Authors Legal Issues Yahoo

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1 Response

  1. Anonymous Patron says:
    October 26, 2005 at 3:51 am

    I’m confused…
    Every blogger who links to and discusses a news story, is merely exercising their 1st Amendment rights. Thus, those bloggers have never been under the gun.

    The only bloggers who’ve ever been liable, have been bloggers who’ve been interviewing, investigating and reporting. And many bloggers do do that. Granted, most of them can’t afford to do it full-time. Take LisNews for example. Mostly it’s just pointing out things of interest. Sometimes we point at expressions of opinion (the weekly blog-roll) – but those are covered under 1st Amendment rights.

    The few times LN has done real reporting, it’s typically been an interview. And that’s an irregular feature. Such features *are* reporting, and should be protected.

    — Ender, Duke_of_URL

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