Correct.
Bloggers actually are a few steps beneath the MSM.
Any homeless puke in a public library can write a blog,
while most of the MSM have "sue-able" assets to protect.
Bloggers risk nothing when posting the most ignorant unfounded garbage they can dream up.
Speaking strictly for myself, I’ll put my reporting skills up against ANY OTHER real reporter in Louisiana, and I’m a blogger.
But the First Amendment does apply to a blogger (we used to be called “pamphleteers”), just as much as The Wall Street Journal.
See the decision here:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=408&invol=665
BRANZBURG v. HAYES, 408 U.S. 665 (1972)
Justice Byron White wrote for the majority, the traditional doctrine that liberty of the press is the right of the lonely pamphleteer who uses carbon paper or a mimeograph just as much as of the large metropolitan publisher who utilizes the latest photocomposition methods.
Not all bloggers are alike. You can not put them in the same pot. Some are better then the others
Any homeless puke in a public library can write a blog, while most of the MSM have "sue-able" assets to protect.
Bloggers risk nothing when posting the most ignorant unfounded garbage they can dream up.
. . . and what do wire service journalists and wire service members risk "when posting the most ignorant unfounded garbage they can dream up?" They risk nothing - because if they lie, the entire rest of wire service journalism will swear to it.In fact, the only real risk they face is that if they go off the reservation and tell too much politically incorrect truth, they will be shunned and driven out of journalism. A la Goldberg.
The difference between the attitude of an "objective" journalist and that of a "liberal" politician is the difference between the attitude of George Stephanopolis the Clinton political operative the day before he was hired to be a journalist, and the attitude of George Stephanopolis the "objective" journalist the day afterward.