Slashdot Mirror
Survey Reveals Americans Support Blog Censorship
renai42 writes "A new survey has revealed that Americans overwhelmingly support strong censorship for blogs, even though a substantial amount have never actually been to one. Eighty percent of the 2,500 respondents did not believe that bloggers should be allowed to publish home addresses and other personal information about private citizens. However, more than one-third of respondents had never heard of blogs before participating in the survey, and only around 30 percent of participants had actually visited a blog themselves."
I don't think it has nearly as much to do with the fact that the
respondents have never been to a blog, but more to do with the fact
that the question is worded such that they are bound to answer in a
given way. Mark Blumenthal points out:
"The error is the incorrect belief that there is a "right" or
"unbiased" way to ask a question about any given public issue. There
is no such thing. Everyone who works within the polling field is well
aware that small changes in wording can affect the ways in which
respondents answer questions. This approach leads us into tortuous
discussions of question wording on which reasonable people can
differ. Further, as you have pointed out many times in the past,
random variation in the construction of the sample or in response
rates can skew the results of any single poll away from the true
distribution of opinions in the population."
Given the question in the survey: "[do you] believe that bloggers
should be allowed to publish home addresses and other personal
information about private citizens?" Of course they are going to say
no. They would say so regardless if it were bloggers, firemen or
priests. It's like asking if you think children should have enough to
eat, everyone is going to say yes, even if it is attached to some dumb
bill raising taxes on golf balls.
What should we do then? Mark Blumenthal goes on to say, "The answer is
NOT to find a single poll with the "best" wording and point to its
results as the final word on the subject. Instead, we should look at
ALL of the polls conducted on the issue by various different polling
organizations. Each scientifically fielded poll presents us with
useful information. By comparing the different responses to multiple
polls -- each with different wording -- we end up with a far more
nuanced picture of where public opinion stands on a particular issue."
Makes sense to me.
--greg Vulcan quiescent... Q: What machine shutdown with this message?
Yeah, it's easy to say blogs need censorship, but how is official going to censor blogs.
Are we going to see a rating on each blog? G, PG, M, R, and P? For PG Rating, mothers will have to read blogs for their innocent children.
It a blog's breaking laws, then there are already venues to take action.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Blogging anonymously is the only way to go. Hide your tracks. Say what you want.
However, nobody wants their personal infomation listed on the internet. I think we all agree that we wouldn't want that. Just posting somebody's email gets them spam.
I know that if somebody posted my son or daughter's picture, address, and phone number... I would want it removed. What if somebody posted your address and said, "They are always gone by 8:30 in the am."
We all want freedom... and that's why we hide ourselves on slashdot and in blogs. The things we say can hurt us. However, it can be used for evil too...
Kinda like everything else in life.
It's pro-personal privacy. It wouldn't matter if you replaced "blog" with "Tv news" or "newspaper" or "radio" people would still say they don't want their addressed published in the media.
what would their response have been if the word instead of blogs would have been "freelance journalists" or "independent newspapers"?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Just because someone hasn't heard of or visited a "blog" doesn't mean they can't be of the opinion that "home addresses and other personal information about private citizens" shouldn't be posted online, whether it's on a "blog" or what we colloquially call a "web page".
More from the survey:
Fifty-two percent of those surveyed said bloggers should have the same rights as traditional journalists, while 27 percent did not express an opinion.
[...] most respondents classed bloggers in the same category as journalists when it came to free speech [...]
[...] most people used blogs to obtain information about politics or current events.
This isn't about "blogging". The personal information bit was about what usually constitutes harassment, that just happens to come in the form of a blog.
God I love these misleading, scare-tactic titles. "AMERICANS SUPPORT BLOG CENSORSHIP", which of course brings to mind nasty, ignorant, redneck religious right wanting to censor Common Dreams and DailyKos. No, morons. They do not believe that bloggers should be allowed to publish home addresses and other personal information about private citizens. All of a sudden that equates to wholesale BLOG CENSORSHIP? And yes, I realize that any censorship - even of that information - is still censorship, but let's get a freakin' grip, here, before people start talking about the "good little sheeple doing what Monkey Boy Bush tells them" etc., ok?
Personally, I'm in favor of my home address being posted on the Internet. These results are shocking.
The consumer-drone sheeple strike again.
Just because of what they're called.
Survey says: highschoolers across the country think NEWSPAPERS should be censored. I'd be astounded, frankly, if these same people a few years later decided to support freedom of speech on all mediums.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Ah yes, nothing like an austrailian news organization (the writer not ZDNet), quoting a survey by some webhost (alot of people have probably never heard of) of 2500 people to tell what the 292 million Americans favor.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
So what you're saying is that the majority of Americans polled have no frigging clue what "Freedom" is all about, even though they support elected leaders that use it as a pro-word? As a citizen soldier, I think I'm gonna be sick.
War isn't about who's right. It's about who's left.
I think the word "censor" when it comes to blogging should be used carefully. It depends on what is being said. For example if it is secret company products being announced (ex: Apple and ThinkSecret), it might make sense to try and keep it secret, as it is a product that was bound by a non-disclosure agreement.
But if it is simply censoring for censorship sake about whatever the censor deems unreasonable, then that is a whole different ballpark. Then it is a infringment of First Ammendment rights.
I feel the same about people who read blogs as I do about people who read tabloids. If you don't want to read it, then don't look. If the information is a little too personal for you than never go back, it may be informative for somebody. At the very least blogging is a strong personal expression and in that sense they should be held in higher regard than tabloids.
This is my last post.
[6th Estate]
Are you sure these people understood the questions? Maybe they thought the survey takers were asking something more like "Do you think people should post other people's personal information in a blog?" Or perhaps, "Would you post other people's personal information in a blog?" Or even, "Would you like a cookie?"
People are generally stupid, after all.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
"It's like they're trying to trap you: 'Have you ever tried sugar, or cocaine?'" -Mitch Hedberg
Digital Sailor
Many Merkins don't know what bloggers are, but feel that they should have the same rights as mainstream journos. Many 'Merkins are also less likely to trust bloggers than other journos.
What's the problem? Why am I wasting time writing and thinking about it?
it seems to me the headline could have been just as easily:
americans overwhelmingly support privacy of citizens
but doesn't fly as well with the america-haters...
Of course not.
People are willing to censor blogs? Does this surprise anyone?
I saw an article (sorry, no reference) where the researchers took a poll to see if people thought certain things should be allowed. They rewrote the Bill of Rights to they'd be unrecognizable to the casual reader, and they asked people if each amendment should be allowed. For each amendment in the Bill of Rights, many (if not most) thought that the right need not be constitutionally protected.
It's not that people agreed strongly with the idea of preventing the government from forcing the quartering of soldiers. It's that most people are so ignorant that they don't know why we have certain protections in place in the Constitution. Freedom of speech? Naw, the government should be able to censor. Freedom of the press? Naw, the press should be required to get government approval for items published. The results were amazing and disturbing!
The point is too many people in America are so comfortable that they take their rights for granted. When people spend more time worrying if a certain entertainer is wearing slutty clothes than they did considering whether the government had given enough (or even correct) justification about going to war and killing hundreds of thousands of people, you know that a country has its priorities screwed up.
It's sad but patriots have died to protect these freedoms and most people don't give a damn. But that's why we have our Constitution: to protect the public from its own shortsightedness.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
I detect a bit of bias on the part of the submitter. Who cares if one third of the respondents hadn't visited a blog? They still wouldn't want their addresses or phone numbers published on the Internet. Who would? Would the submitter? I think this is an attempt to stir up the masses with references to "censorship."
It could be argued that publishing such information is a violation of a person's privacy. Free speech extends so far that it does not violate the rights of another person.
Notice how the poll questions are essentially asking the poll respondents about PRIVACY issues (bloggers spilling PERSONAL data online about politicians, judges, and celebrities). But this article is trying to sell those results as evidence that the public supports cracking down on political blogs using campaign finance laws.
You have here a first rate example of the economic elite using mass media propaganda.
They have been doing this for over 100 years here in America.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
This has nothing to do with censorship and who ever wrote the title should be ashamed of themself. People, whether celebrities or politicians deserve to have their personal information kept private when it has no bearing on their ability to do their job. I don't care what a politician does in his or her personal life, I only care what they do when they're dealing with the issues of the day. All these people seem to be saying is that personal issues should be kept out of the public eye. That's not censorship that's just common decency.
The problem isn't me reading a blog entry about me. I already know where I live, what my ID numbers are, etc. etc. The problem is that I can't stop somebody else reading that.
This issue is bigger than just personal info valuable to strangers, too. I've had a bitter ex-g/f post intimate personal e-mails on her blog from the time we were going out, and with a large dose of editing, taking out of context, and outright lies thrown in for good measure. She knew damn well that several close friends of mine also read that blog, and would think less of me after reading what she wrote (or her adapted version of what I had once written).
The real killer is that despite the blog host being a big name, they didn't give a shit. In fact, after the ex made the post "private" (which didn't stop our common friends from reading it) when I wrote to her and asked her to remove the comments, the LJ admins then claimed (in response to my formal complaint) that they couldn't access that area of the database, and therefore couldn't do anything about the post. All of which helped me and my relationships with some formerly close friends not at all.
So, what am I supposed to do? I live in the UK, so I'm hardly going to pay hundreds of $$$ to hire a US attorney and pursue a defamation suit against my ex in the US just to get LJ to take the post down, am I? But without any official, international regulation of this area of the Internet, the damage was done all the same, and it hurt a lot more than posting any credit card number would have.
Freedom of speech is a valuable thing, but it is not the only valuable thing, and it is far too powerful to be an absolute.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Most Americans are unaware of how much of their information is public. You address and phone number are public information and most efforts you can try do not prevent it from being accesiable to the public. The problem is most Americans think that their information is private, it isn't. You want to start a flamewar on /. Just do a whois on someone's website and post it in a /. story. Dont believe me I did it here
The replies show how other respond to items like this. This is not about bloggers rights or whether or not they are journalists. They are about the fact that most Americans continue to revel in their ignorance about what they think is their right to privacy.
...and Transparent Society. It's pretty unreasonable to assume with the rapid advances in technology (both communication and surveillance) that we're going to retain the level of privacy these survey respondents seem to feel entitled to.
Then again, a lot of people seem to be their own worst enemy in this regard. A couple weeks ago I received a forwarded email from my shocked mother informing me of this frightening fact: if your address is listed in the phone book, someone can Google your phone number to find out where you live! [gasp]
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
This survey is more an indication that blogs are part of the moment's zeitgeist than a meaningful barometer of attitudes. It conflates the status of "blogs" with "privacy publication" in the amorphous public mind, so it's not really scientific. But it is telling that Americans have some kind of attitude towards "blogs" (rather than answering "I don't know"), which indicates a niche in the broadcast media that is defining them. And the survey itself indicates both the interest in funders of surveys, and the survey's own addition to the buzz, working to define blogs right now.
;).
The appearance of blogs on the media agenda is important to people who care about blogs. Because the broadcast media inevitably distorts, especially when its corporations and personalities perceive a threat. Associating blogs with privacy invasion indicates which way their propaganda will go, though this one tiny datapoint is a drop in the bucket. But the inevitable storms of public opinion, especially as people gradually grow more connected to interactive blogs than we ever were to broadcasts, will partly be formed by these butterfly wings flapping in Hollywood. We who consume blogs, especially we who hope blogs can replace the failed broadcast media in the essential task of journalism, rather than mere infotainverts, ignore these early warnings at our peril. You read it here first
--
make install -not war
Obviously, the above is a lot of rubbish, but you read the whole thing, so it was probably good, wholesome rubbish.
Would it have been that much harder to say "Survey Shows American Oppose Online Publication of Private Information?" 'Cause that's all the survey really showed.
Here's a poll: is unbiased reporting of news better or worse than biased reporting of news?
...but is it art?
The solution to bad polls like this is easy. If the pollers refuse to ask more straight forward questions, post their home addresses on your blog.
The solution is to publish the exact wording of the actual questions. (also might be good to publish the exact method of choosing the pool of questionees)
But the exact wording of the questions would, to a certain degree, "open-source" opinion polling.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
If you grab all the studies in the area and look at them in search of truth, all you are really doing is rewarding consensus. If all studies were your golf ball example, then looking at ten of them with that phrasing would be *less* helpful than one. As soon as this becomes the common way to do this, the guys wanting to raise golf ball taxes will simply commission more studies (months in advance, unpublicized) and they'll all come out over the course of two years, gradually swaying public opinion.
You would be a fool to believe that this is not occurring constantly.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/f irstamendmentcenter.org/analysis.aspx? id=13575
http://www.
The First Amendment Center regularly polls Americans about their feelings about the First Amendment - and as the second URL, an assessment of the 2004 report reveals, it's an exercise that reveals that as a population we are ambivalent and conflicted about the freedom of speech, often asserting contradictory opinions about related topics. I think this is an example of the same issue. We overwhelmingly support the First Amendment in principle... but when it gets to the specifics we get sketchy. And I can sort of understand this: when asked about freedom of speech we think about general principles, abstractions. When asked about something like posting personal information on the internet we imagine personal scenarios: our own information or the information of our loved ones being made public (of course we're not talking about information that is otherwise truly private, but the question focuses attention on a specific scenario), bad things happening as a result. It's not surprising we're conflicted.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Compare it to: 39 percent said they found semaphore-relayed messages less credible than those transmitted by telegraph, while 32 percent said they either did not know or had no opinion *sigh* When you group the NY Times and the Washington Post with Weekly World News and the National Enquirer, you might get skewed results.
"Eighty percent of the 2,500 respondents..." So we have a survey comprised of less than .001% of American population, and clueless as even the post implied. Now, if i'm not mistaken, the title reads:
"The survey reveals Americans support blog censorship."
Oh, yeah. It really "reveals" the truth. Would this post have made the front page of /. if the title was really what it's about?
"An insignificant and unconfirmed survey done by a company craving attention may suggest that Americans don't support publishing their private information."
By the way, why is it linked to ZD Net Australia? Shouldn't it link to the original survey? Because I can't find it anywhere.
sorry for the bad handwriting
Next thing you know, folks on Slashdot will be posting comments without even reading the articles!
If you don't believe this, go to your local courthouse - who has purchased what property and how much they paid for it is a public record and anybody can access it.
"other personal information", depending on what that covers, may be worth protecting.
Personally, I would suggest a privacy amendment to the constitution. Just take a national referendum and protect what the majority wants protected. Oh, and no special provisions for corporations, politicians, law enforcement, or the wealthy - everyone gets treated equally.
There are ALREADY laws against criminal harassment, threats, and other crimes. Additionally, there are always civil options for suing over any damages you wish to claim. You only need to convince the court to agree with your case.
The medium for these crimes ought make no difference. The logical processing of electrons should NOT be a "special case".
I suggest you read Slashdot
I want to know what Hostway's demographic was on this survey. 2,500 people is not enough to be an adequate sample of Americans. There are currently 295,877,596 Americans according to POPclocks. A sample of 2,500 people, some of whom might not even be Americans, is about .000084494% of the American population.
Take this "survey" with a grain of salt, but put on your rain boots, it's going to be a FUDdy day for the media.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
We do?
Find out who paid for the poll! Then you'll know which party's agenda is behind the slant.
Wasn't Senator Clinton recently asking questions about censoring bloggers?
You weren't modded down for posting "private information." You were modded down because the way you provided the information implied that people should harass the site operator.
"Hey everyone! Mr. Smith at (555)555-6547 is a complete ass."
"Hey everyone! Jon Doe at (555)555-4578 Lane is a registered sex offender."
Are you going to call up Mr. Smith and ask him for a cup of sugar? Do you plan on asking Jon Doe to baby sit? Do you expect to have any kind of meaningful dialog with these people?
"Is it true you're a sex offender?" "Yes."
There is no use for that information other than to bug those people.
----------------
This comment re-posted for your viewing pleasure. Now with 60% more carrage returns!
Sigh. Yes.
.us domains.
But then these same people who are trying to enforce some rules (such as this) on blogs turn around, and are for forcing you to publish your own address, and aren't you also a Private Citizen? It's already happened for
That is what I call "backwards", if you ask me.
For context, click Parent.
Sorry, I don't believe that any whiny moron with a web page is automatically God, and can do whatever he damn pleases to other people. Privacy _is_ an issue even if you're a "blogger".
And sometimes it's just that: privacy. I don't care about "slippery slope" theories, you just have no business giving away someone else's data. I'll worry about "freedom of speech" issues when it's about actually censoring political opinions, which is really all that that ammendment was supposed to protect. Bullying your boss or your ex-girlfriend via publishing their life on the web, is one "freedom of speech" I'll be quite happy to do without.
And it's not even just about bloggers.
Companies too _are_ bound by some privacy laws, and doubly so in Europe. If anyone published my details, even in a newspaper or company brochure or as "customer of the month" on their games e-commerce site, they could get their pants sued off. That data is, simply put, mine not theirs in the first place. If they published children's addresses and schedule to go to school, I _think_ they may even run into some criminal laws.
But even in the USA, there are already laws covering that kind of thing. E.g., a newspaper can't publish your medical record.
So I see nothing wrong with asking that "bloggers" are bound by the same rules. Again, no, just being able to type a whine in a text box does _not_ make you god, does _not_ put you above privacy or common courtesy rules, and sure as hell does _not_ give you carte blance to bully other people ("here's my boss's home address and phone number. He's a fucking moron. Do something to inconvenience him.")
You're just a guy with a web page, nothing more. You're not above the law. And if something annoys enough people, the law gets changed to reflect that. Even if it involves bringing you down from the imaginary pedestal of blogger godhood. That's all.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
This particular thing has nothing to do with media censorship, freedom of speech, etc. etc. It is about data protection.
In the UK we have had a Data Protection Act for eleven years, and it has done much more for the rights of the private individual than it ever did for the government/spies/corporations.
The gist of it is this. If you give personal information to someone, they may only use it for the purposes you permitted them to, and after those purposes are complete, you must destroy the information. Additionally, if someone is collecting information about you and it is impossible for you to consent, they must warn you about it beforehand, and you may ask them at any time for a copy.
Here are some of the rights the DPA entitles me to:
I believe that this law also applies to the rest of the EU now, but I don't believe there's anything like this in North America yet.
Go America, if we don't understand it, let our government regulate and control it for us, because they can do no wrong. They'll do what is right for us, yee haw!
Bunch of fucking sheep in this country.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Actually, the fear for most of us aren't some crazed serial killer coming to our house (although not knowing the address help). The number one problem with having personal info on the web is the chance that identity thief might use them to social engineer others to impersonate you. Also, the reason no one slaps a restraining order on the paparazzi is because their target have higher libel (forgot the correct term), which means that their targets are famous, so they should already have the reputation and mean to dispel any rumor unlike us insignificant, poor peasants.
For 1, I don't believe bloggers should have ANY need to publish personal info (other then stating names and such) or normal, private citizens (which would exclude the likes of politicians and celebrities).
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
What exactly is wrong with believing that personal information like home addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses etc should not be publically published? that's not censorship at all. Censorship is when one is forbidden to publish his/her opinion on a subject.
Web logs are a nice 'invention' for communicating ideas, opinions etc, but since the pen is mightier than the sword, blog content must be 'politically correct' in the sense that it does not harm others. If revelations about scandals are to be published in weblogs, they better be accompanied with evidence, otherwise it is yellow journalism.
I know it's a little late and so this will probably not get much attention, but having read through the list of comments I'm surprised not to have seen more about how easily accessible home addresses and phone numbers already are.
You've got the phone book, sure, but remember you've also got Google out there. Type in someone's full name and city (sometimes city isn't even needed) and pop! there is their address, and, unless it's unlisted, their phone number.
Now, one can play the game, saying that posting information like that on a blog somewhere is a lot more like pointing a finger directly at the person in question, highlighting their information, but to me the difference is slight, if tenable at all. All you need is someone's name to get an address out of Google, and it is still legal for bloggers to post a name.
Besides (and I have seen this posted above), personal addresses and phone numbers (unless specifically requested) are not private information at all. So we're talking about intent here. The intent to misuse this information.
The focus is supposedly on people's ideas of censorship, in whatever form you want to take it, but what we're really talking about here is discrimination.
I don't really want my information highlighted on the internet, public or private as it might be. But I want even less to discriminate against those who are exercising a perfectly legal right to publish public information. *That* is where the slippery slope begins, and we don't want to go down that road.
Oh wait... we already are.
"We must still have chaos within in order to be able to give birth to a dancing star." --Friedrich Nietzsche
So what these statistics really say is that somewhere around 80% of Americans are idiots.
I don't really think that the 20% of Americans who are not idiots or the rest of the world will be too surprised.
MMMMmmmmm. Government by the majority. Tasty.
Deleted
This is how the Propaganda Machine works. The media tell you what you should think, then they conduct polls using questions based on false premises with answer sets designed to exclude dissenting opinions.
Goebbels would be so proud.
Have you stopped hitting you're mother yet?slashdot broke my sig
Lies, damn lies and statistics. Nothing in the article supports the conclusions drawn in the squib, and the survey might not even support the statements in the article.
Surveys ask particular questions, and when properly conducted under certain assumptions, can yield statistical inferences about the behavior of a defined universe with respect to the questions asked. Done properly, they can offer remarkably good insight about a population at large.
Strike any of the assumptions, however, they are meaningless numbers, reflecting only a census of the narrow population that was actually polled, permitting no meaningful inferences about larger populations.
But in any case, even where the survey is properly conducted and permits inferences about the attitude of a broader population, the results of the survey are only the inferences concerning the QUESTIONS THE SURVEY ASKED.
And even so, it is as important to consider questions not asked and to measure the impact of the question on the sample. Are there adequate controls.
Here, the article suggests that persons were asked, among others, whether bloggers should be permitted to publish personal information. Is that a question about privacy law or about blogs? Would the same persons, asked the same question answer the same or differently if the medium was a home newsletter, network news or a newspaper? Perhaps the censorship sought here is merely the publication of personal information regardless of medium. Would it matter if the material were itself newsworthy?
Absent scientific control questions, we'll never know. In any case, I saw nothing to suggest that a poll of consumers of a particular service using the questions asked without more would support the far-flung suggestion in the headline, the squib or een the article itself.
No, sorry, I think people are perfectly qualified to understand that they don't want their private data on the web.
Competency is relative. Is a person competent to make a personal decision? Of course. But that doesn't mean they decide things which are in their own best interest. Given the choice, most people would decide to stay subconscious. To do what they've always been doing: not necessarily what they choose to do or what is in their best interest to do.
What the article is suggesting and what most people don't understand is that the framework of how something is worded, for most people, greatly influences their decision. It's psychology. People of course are going to be afraid someone will abuse their personal information, even if the context is wrong and that result is unlikely of ever happening. (Nobody I personally know has been subject to Identity Theft- it's simply not a likely thing to happen and thus not worth the wasted energy worrying about it.)
Basically it's "bah, I'm the important one. You don't matter."
This is true for all people. Even the smartest person in the world, who has a wide variety of choice available to them, is going to be self-centered. Because that's just how people work. There is nothing wrong with it. Where we get screwed up is when people refuse to believe that everyone has different and has different strengths and weaknesses. A smart person has more value to society then a dumb one. It doesn't mean that the dumb one is an unworthy person, but trying ignore the difference between the two extremes, when we know the difference exists, is simply disregarding facts.
Anyway, the orginal point remains. Most polls are complete crap- not because of the wording, but because there's no data as to why people are making any particular choice, what their background is, what their belief systems are, etc. It's trying to chuck down WAY too much data into a teeny-weeny space, and then making some outlandish conclusion based on that. The process itself is simply flawed for telling anyone any useful information about what people believe.
It's about time some people stepped up and took my side against the publishing of names and personal addresses. I've been looking to take down phone book publishers for years. Now my evil plot is finally coming to fruition.
Today the yellow pages, tomorrow the world! Mu ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Wow. The public really is blind.
- Nobody can stop anyone from posting information on the internet. It's simply impossible.
- The internet isn't governed by the US government. There's nothing the governement can do to stop people posting information, except to lock down the entire internet like the Chinese do. That won't happen because the media in this country is too powerful.
- It doesn't matter if bloggers are journalists or not. If I write something on a piece of paper, photocopy it, and give it to 100 people, am I a journalist? The socially acceptable opinion would be: "No". The real question is not over journalism, the question is over trust. And nothing, absolutely NOTHING on the internet can be trusted, because it's damn near impossible to tag any piece of information definitively to a person. So the answer becomes: choose who you trust carefully.
The big piece of all of this is the slow realization that it's becoming no longer necessary to go to school for 20 years to learn the "proper" way of doing something. Not when people have a resource like the net, and can quickly become an expert in nearly any subject (highly technical subjects still probably require degrees.) Where "journalists" are getting pissed off is simply a lack of acknowledgement that the times have changed and the barrier to entry has become much smaller then they would like to admit.
I must disagree with your arguments. You speak from the position of enlightened hopefullness - you hope anonymous bureaucrats won't take things too far, since you would not yourself (you feel). This is the sort of cowed, wishful thinking that got us the Department of Homeland Security.
This is, at heart, a question of scale. In how many cases is the release of "private" information by bloggers 1) possible, 2) not remediable under existing laws? Answer: damn little. Potential for rediculous escalation and abuse of power? Certain.
Let consider some examples: some disgruntled employee goes and whines in his blog about his boss, and publishes his home address on the page, with the implication that someone should go and egg the boss's house. Ok. How many people will seriously do that just because they read that on the web? Maybe a few - but they would be looking for trouble in any event, and this is simply a different focal point. Vandalism is an offence. If they get caught, there will be some legal trouble, and the boss has to garden hose his house for a bit. Case settled.
Another, more serious case: someone with access to medical records finds info on a person they don't like and publish it. Now it's on the web, i.e. for everyone to see. This is serious. Serious enough that the offended person can have recourse to full strength of laws about privacy and god knows what else (IANAL). The person is sued, fired from his condifential job, and probably become unemployable. Troubling for the victim - yes. But if they take action within the civil, personal scope, ultimately self-correcting. It's true that the person who would think of violating their professional ethics to this extent is already highly unbalanced, should not have been employed there, and the Internet facilitates (but by no means is the sole cause/avenue) for such behaviour. However, that's the reality of the changing world - more info available nearly-instantly to everyone.
Now your solution. "'checked' censorship". Checked by whom?! "Who watches the watchers" isn't a new question - it's as old as sin. The Romans even knew about it. As you have pointed out, the censorship is difficult. Read: unenforceable. How in the world are you going to do this: hire more federal employees to check every online forum and post? Have the Department of Online Blogging? Only blogs hosted by the Feds are legal? Signing up to their account? What are you talking about? This is about as rational as Argentina requiring IP records for 10 years on all connections. It's beyond delusional.
The most disturbing thing is that people are in favor of government supervision in things that they don't even know about. This is "Big Daddy White Father Knows Best" attitude at it's finest. This is what the pioneer descendants of Lewis and Clark have turned into? A country of savage surviving badasses that hacked and slashed their way across the country, worked, sweated and died as rugged individualists, *this* is what they've become? A people in favor of having some pencil-neck bureaucrat in a Washington Office Ok-ing the publication of even the garbage that they post online? What next? The Office of Bathroom Permission? Yes, Citizen 8849393, you may visit the bathroom now. Citizen 4921993 - you have made 3 unauthorized bathroom visits in the last 2 days. How about you explain that behavior?
Oh my country! What have you done to yourself!
The McCain-Feingold act really hurts third party candidates, to whom publicity is very expensive. Dems and Reps already have all the publicity they need, but if you're coming in from the side, you'd better have a lot of financial support. This act stop that support and effectively chokes out all but the two major parties (big surprise it's a bi-partisan law, huh?)
Then, there's the fairness doctrine. It makes radio stations devote equal time to both sides of every issue. Therefore, a liberal talk radio show would have to give equal air time to conservative hosts, and vice versa. Obviously, if a station is predominantly liberal or conservative, it will lose viewers and thus advertising dollars. Since conservative talk radio stations are more common than progressive ones, you will see Hillary Clinton support this act because it hurts them.
People have a view of censorship that the men in uniforms will swoop down on you if you say or write the wrong thing, but hitting peoples' wallets is far easier, more subtle, and less likely to be resisted.
The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey