2005年NPR美国国家公共电台三月-Slate's Big Idea: Who Should be Considere

This is Day to Day, I am Madeline Brand. There is an old thought from jounalist AJ. Liebling that freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one, well if that's true, then tens of millions of men and women in this country now own the modern equivalent of a press. It's a personal computer and a connection to the Internet. Bloggers can put their reporting or their opionions out for the whole world to see. But are they really journalists? And should they receive the protections afforded to more traditional journalists? These are questions taken up in a new essay by Slate 1's editor Jacob Weisburg. He spoke 2 with Day to Day's Alex Chadwick.

Jacob, one of the big problems with defining who's a journalist is that you don't need a license 3 to practise journalism 4, you don't even need a degree, you don't really even need a steady job.

You're right, Alex. Journalists aren't specially 5 trained as they will alway tell you or credentialed with license. It's more an activity than a profession. And there're a great many famous journalists such as the late great I.F. Stone, who essentially 6 published a glorified 7 newsletter from his house and with an independent operator much like a blogger without a blog. But now there're hundreds of thousands of citizens who're essentially practising journalism in every style and at every level of scale and talent because it's so easy to do so with the Internet.

You can't really even tell the difference anymore between a journalist and a non-journalist on the basis of "Are you operating solely 8 on the Internet?", because both Slate, in your own instance, and Salon 9, and other publications are only online. But no one disputes that this is real journalism that takes place there.

Well, I hope that's true. I actually think one of the great things the Internet has done is break down the barrier between amateurs and professionals in journalism. Today, if you think you're a journalist, you are a journalist. And the key point is that the First Amendment 10 Right of freedom of the press belongs to anybody who practises the activity of journalism, however and wherever they do it.

Well, what about this case here in California where Apple Computer has subpoenaed 11 three bloggers, who it claims, reported (er) trade secrets on their blogs. And here it makes a big difference whether they're journalists or not. They claim that they're journalists and they shouldn't be forced to reveal their sources. Apple says they aren't really journalists, they are information disseminators.

That's right. California is one of the states that has a shield law which creates a kind of privilege for reporters to protect confidential 12 sources. They're different in different states. But these bloggers say they should be covered by it. The problem is that if it covers everyone, it becomes essentially unusable. And that's the big problem now with shield laws. Both the ones that're already on the books in a lot of states and the federal one that a lot of journalists and media/ institutions think that either the courts or Congress should create.

So, if anyone who writes a broadcast for the public can be considered a journalist, what does that mean for the laws that apply to reporters? Should bloggers fall under them or not?

Well, I think, I think bloggers are journalists. They certainly should fall under these laws wherever they exist. But I think, in reality, the way bloggers are now operating, and what's happened in journalism in the last ten years, probably make shield laws much more practically useful. I do think there are other ways to protect the right of the press to gather information and the right of the public to know.

Opinion and analysis from Jacob Weisburg. He is editor of our online partner magazine Slate. You'll find his essay "Who Is A Journalist?" at slate.com. Jacob, thanks.

Thank you, Alex.

I'm Alex Chadwick.