House Panel Approves Blogger Shield Bill

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

I feel a bit safer now. Just kidding. This is just the first step; it’s not even the full House, just a panel. And of course, getting it past Bush, who has voiced opposition to the shield, is most likely a lost cause.

In response to concerns raised by the Bush administration and other politicians, the revised bill attempts to exclude the “casual blogger” from reaping those benefits by stipulating the protections apply only to those who derive “financial gain or livelihood” from the journalistic activity, Boucher said Wednesday. That broad rule could, however, include part-time writers who receive even a trickle of revenue from Google Ads or Blogads.com. Source: News.com

We Say: A lot of the opposition stems from opinions like that of Rep. Adam Schiff … what he said was anyone “could start a blog and request advertising on that blog, and whether they get it or not, would be considered a journalist under this bill.” While that is a point, the main idea of such a bill, IMHO, is to prevents repetitions of incidents like what happened to Josh Wolf. Personally I would say that he, or even myself, qualify as journalists and should be shielded, but this would put more weight behind such arguments.