{"id":1211,"date":"2012-11-15T01:47:01","date_gmt":"2012-11-15T01:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=1211"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:54:05","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:54:05","slug":"citizen-journalism-and-the-media-shield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/citizen-journalism-and-the-media-shield\/","title":{"rendered":"Citizen Journalism and the Media Shield"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, November 14, 2012, by Kenneth Jennings
\nIn a world where the definition of journalism is changing, the traditional legal protections enjoyed by journalists have come into question.\u00a0\u00a0 Media shield laws, which have been adopted in a majority of jurisdictions for decades, facilitate journalistic truth-seeking by protecting the identities of confidential sources.\u00a0 Such laws pair with Supreme Court precedent<\/a> that requires a heightened burden for plaintiffs to recover on defamation claims against journalists.\u00a0 Should the intrepid reporters of the blogosphere enjoy the same protections?\u00a0
\nLast year, in a well-publicized Oregon case<\/a>, a jury found self-described investigative blogger Crystal Cox guilty of defamation, levying a staggering 2.5 million dollar judgment against her.\u00a0 That case is now set to be heard by the 9th<\/sup> Circuit, and has attracted Amicus Briefs by both the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press<\/a>, and Scotusblog.com<\/a> (a site covering U.S. Supreme Court cases in detail).<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat makes journalism journalism is not its format but its content.\u201d \u2013Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The case turned on two key issues: (1) whether an individual blogger such as Cox can falls under the traditional definition of a \u201cjournalist,\u201d thus providing her protection under Oregon\u2019s media shield law, and (2) whether the use of the media shield was appropriate where Cox claimed the existence of \u2018classified source,\u2019 in order to sustain a defense that the remarks on her blog could not be used in litigation for the purposes of establishing damages.\u00a0 While it is clear that the answer to issue (2) is a resounding no (see Oregon media shield law prohibiting the use of the statute as a \u2018sword and shield\u2019), the amici sound concerns specific to issue (1).
\nProblematically, the amici argue, the District Judge included language in his opinion<\/a> that focused on the Oregon statute\u2019s list of traditional media forms (which do not include blogs), and stated that as a blogger Cox was objectively not a part of the media.\u00a0 The Judge has since clarified that specific circumstances in this case warranted such a classification:
\nIn my discussion, I did not state that a person who “blogs” could never be considered “media.” I also did not state that to be considered “media,” one had to possess all or most of the characteristics I recited. Rather, I confined my conclusion to the record defendant created in this case and noted that defendant had presented no evidence as to any single one of the characteristics which would tend to establish oneself as a member of the “media.”
\nIn their brief, the Reporters Committee argues that media protection laws extend to journalists regardless of medium: \u201cWhat makes journalism journalism is not its format but its content.\u201d\u00a0 Scotusblog.com makes a similar, but slightly distinguishable argument.\u00a0 Namely, that the 9th<\/sup> Circuit should take this opportunity to explicitly add alternative useful sources of information, including legitimate blogs like Scotusblog, to the list of media protected.
\nThe outcome of the case will shed additional light on the status of media protection laws, and the legal status the modern citizen journalist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, November 14, 2012, by Kenneth Jennings In a world where the definition of journalism is changing, the traditional legal protections enjoyed by journalists have come into question.\u00a0\u00a0 Media shield laws, which have been adopted in a majority of jurisdictions for decades, facilitate journalistic truth-seeking by protecting the identities of confidential sources.\u00a0 Such laws pair …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7659,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211\/revisions\/7659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}