Are Bloggers Journalists?

Intellectual Capital: Michael McGough / Are bloggers journalists?
A judge who would jail reporters questions their special status under the First Amendment. He has a point.
Editorial Opinion - Monday, February 21, 2005 - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Circuit Judge David S. Tatel acknowledged that "unconventional forms of journalism -- freelance writers and Internet 'bloggers,' for example -- may raise definitional conundrums down the road." But Tatel suggested that courts could settle the issue on a case-by-case basis with the "flexibility and capacity for growth and adaptation [that] is the peculiar boast and excellence of the common law."

What are we to think when an oligarchic judge starts proclaiming the need to decide things on a "case-by-case" basis? This is the natural language of tyrants who would not be bound by law but wish to rule based on their own opinion. We have way too much of this arrogant "ruling" already. That is how the elitist judges have twisted the Constitution on its head and now interpret a clause guaranteeing freedom of religion into a clause they claim prohibits the free expression of religion in public.

It is equally bizarre to hear a journalist who is petrified of the new phenomenon of blogging proclaim the judge is right to limit "press protection" for his competition. Is this America?