Bloggers and the First Amendment: Shield Law Test

(Note: This is the second in a series of posts about this topic by Kelsey Browne & Ariel Fox) Finally, on its 17th try, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to send the proposed Federal Shield Law to the floor. This is promising, particularly because the Senate bill's definition of who would be eligible for Shield Law protection – as it currently stands – is pretty good for bloggers, and better than the House bill's definition. As we discussed previously, the House's version restricts coverage to those who receive a substantial portion of their livelihood or substantial financial gain from their……

Do Bloggers Have First Amendment Rights?

Issue 1: The Shield Law (Note: This is the first in a series of posts about this topic by Kelsey Browne & Ariel Fox)What is a blogger?   The myriad ways in which blogging takes shape make definition difficult.   Ranging from online diaries to overt advertisements to community newssites, blogs send forth a wide range of varied speech into the world.   How should this speech be regulated, and how should such regulations be reconciled with the First Amendment?   As with non-internet speech, questions of who the speaker is, and what the context and subject of the speech is, remain paramount.  But……

FOI Day 2009: Who will pay for the fight against secrecy?

For the beleaguered news industry, there's a rare upward trendline as it approaches next week's Freedom of Information observance. Congress passed a Freedom of Information Act upgrade last year. A new federal shield law seems within grasp. And President Obama is promising the most transparent government in history. But on Monday, Lucy Dalglish will carry a decidedly un-sunny message to Florida's FOI Day celebration: The declining fortunes of mainstream media, she will say, could cripple efforts to fight government secrecy and preserve openness. "The last 45 to 50 years, these critical issues have been led by the mainstream media," said……