Catherine Faas
American blogger Josh Wolf was sent to prison for a month after refusing to give up the anonymity of his sources and his unpublished materials. This situation could have played out even worse if Wolf had been a blogger - without the title of journalist - to defend his right to protect his sources.
In the US, there is currently no law that allows bloggers and citizen journalists to protect their sources. This is troublesome because 66 per cent of professional journalists use blogs to assist in their reporting - making blogs a significant part of the newsgathering process, according to MediaShift.
Should we have a shield law for journalists and bloggers, regardless of their medium of communication? Here’s what a couple of bloggers say on both sides of the argument.
Can you fathom the number of people that could then deny the police access to information based on the fact that they write a blog? Hey, I am a blogger. Police need access to information from all sources that have it to prevent and prosecute crime. This is a very important public interest.
On a separate note, I am still amazed that reporters cite the First Amendment as giving them a right to protect their sources. Our Supreme Court has uniformly and repeatedly stated that it doesn't. Thus, the rise in the demand for so-called “shield laws” in the US.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a nonprofit civil rights group which fights for bloggers rights, your privacy online, and other important issues. If you are concerned about these issues you should go to http://eff.org and join, because we have a much better chance of defending these rights through collective action than we do fighting individually. United we stand, divided we fall.
Thomas L. Blair is a sociologist and political blogger on the Chronicleworld 'for creative renewal in Black Britain and Afro-Europe'. His work is honoured in the British Library's archive of "social, historic and culturally significant web-based material from the UK domain". He won top prize in the blogging competition on The-Latest.
Sumantra Maitra is a freelance journalist from Mumbai, India. He is a correspondent for All Sports magazine, and a foreign affairs blogger for the Washington Examiner. He has written articles for news website Merinews.com and other regional publications. Sumantra runs a blog at DailyWorldWatch.wordpress.com. He provided exclusive eyewitness reports for The-Latest on the Mumbai bombings of 2008.
Brian Usher is photography consultant for The-Latest.Com. He is a highly experienced editorial and commercial photographer whose work has been published throughout the world, appearing in many well known magazines and newspapers. Brian has featured in several books and has been a writer for the Royal Photographic Society magazine.
Heidi Kingstone has spent time in Afghanistan reporting for a number of publications. Her work has appeared in the Financial Times, The Spectator, The Sunday Times and other international journals. She has also reported from places like Iraq, Rwanda, Lebanon, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya. Heidi is The-Latest's Editor at large.
latest comments