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Bloggers Not Eligible for Shield Law?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the shell-games-and-other-fun dept.

Drew writes "Senator Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.), a co-sponsor to the Free Flow of Information Act 2005, has said that he does not expect bloggers to receive the protections proposed by the shield law under consideration. From the article: 'Are bloggers journalists or some of the commercial businesses that you here would probably not consider real journalists? Probably not, but how do you determine who will be included in this bill?' The bill is supposed to restore the Free Press in the US, Lugar said. But how can that be when there's no definition of 'journalist'?"

2 of 401 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Typical elected official by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you guys didn't have the reading comprehension skills of chimpanzees then you would realize that he's trying to come up with a good definition of journalists, not unsure about what the bill says. In his opinion, bloggers shouldn't be considered journalists, but he expects there to be debate about that.

  2. Re:Journalists aren't journalists either.... by the_real_bto · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is offtopic, but it is also worth noting that the debate itself is controlled by the Democrats and Republicans.

    "In 1987 the bi-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) was formed - a private entity run by former chairmen of the Republican and Democratic parties."

    http://www.debatethis.org/