As usual in cases where journalists report on first amendment issues raised by other people, the headline (and some of the text of the article) here is a misrepresentation based on the myth of special privilege for journalists under the First Amendment: the 9th Circuit, here, did not find that "bloggers are journalist", it found that the First Amendment protection of the "freedom of the press" protects a freedom of the people generally to publish information; "the press" referred to being the act of publishing -- as by use of a printing press -- just as freedom of "speech" refers to the act of speaking.
Institutional journalists want to see "the press" in "freedom of the press" to be read in the sense of "institutional journalists" rather than "the act of publishing information", and want it to be a basis of special and superior rights for those in their profession over the masses, which is an understandable, self-interested desire.
What is more problematic than that desire is the way they misrepresent the courts, every time the courts explicitly reject that interpretation in favor of interpreting the First Amendment as protecting rights of the people generally, as the courts accepting the idea of special rights for journalists, but including some other group in the definition of "journalists".
The Court didn't say bloggers are journalists, it said being a journalist isn't the basis of First Amendment protection, saying "The protections of the
First Amendment do not turn on whether the defendant was
a trained journalist [...]" and "In
defamation cases, the public-figure status of a plaintiff and the public importance of the statement at issue--not the identity of the speaker--provide the First Amendment
touchstones."
Institutional journalists want to see "the press" in "freedom of the press" to be read in the sense of "institutional journalists" rather than "the act of publishing information", and want it to be a basis of special and superior rights for those in their profession over the masses, which is an understandable, self-interested desire.
What is more problematic than that desire is the way they misrepresent the courts, every time the courts explicitly reject that interpretation in favor of interpreting the First Amendment as protecting rights of the people generally, as the courts accepting the idea of special rights for journalists, but including some other group in the definition of "journalists".
The Court didn't say bloggers are journalists, it said being a journalist isn't the basis of First Amendment protection, saying "The protections of the First Amendment do not turn on whether the defendant was a trained journalist [...]" and "In defamation cases, the public-figure status of a plaintiff and the public importance of the statement at issue--not the identity of the speaker--provide the First Amendment touchstones."