Freedom of the press applies to blogs


Another case of me being ahead of my time
There was a great piece in the Arizona Republic.

Though disputed by many, it is a valuable lens through which to examine the kinds of press and speech that were present when the First Amendment was ratified as part of the Bill of Rights. What did the framers intend to protect?

In late-18th-century America, no more than 100 newspapers existed, many of which would barely qualify as newspapers today. Though the roots of American journalism can be traced to this period, there was little that we'd recognize as "journalism" by today's standards. Many were small, contained anything but recent news, and were often little more than publications of commentary.

Examples of journalism or not, however, they merited First Amendment protection.

Besides newspapers, pamphlets were at least as common during the years surrounding the American Revolution. By and large, pamphleteers were not journalists to the extent that objectivity was a prerequisite. Consider, for example, "Common Sense" author Thomas Paine - hardly a champion of dispassionate neutrality.

This was the press of the day - the institution that was granted constitutional protection by the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. . . . " Within this context, whether they were journalists was a moot point. Value was placed in the expression of ideas, information and opinions.

Flashback - check out the comments of this post from October of 2005. Since it is me, I still get the Technopagan Green, but since it's comments, I'm going to go with Courier for the quote.

My point is that I should not need government permission. It is not the government's job to determine if I am legitimate press or not, they are specifically forbidden from doing so, If I had bought a laser printer instead of the domain names and produced a newsletter with exactly the same content, no one would question that was freedom of the press. And no one would ask if I had press credentials or if I had paid my license fee to speak. 
 
But since it is the internet, some think it can be controlled.

Ah, but we're not done yet. See, the various agencies of the Federal government don't like that pesky freedom of speech thing. Neither do certain Senators who should be tried for treason because they sponsored a law designed to prevent dissent.

Who would dare write of these things if freedom of the press only applied to "legitimate" reporting?

— NeoWayland

Posted: Mon - February 1, 2010 at 02:11 PM  Tag


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