Bloggers Are Not Protected Journalists

[Bec]

... and won't be entitled to shield laws.

N.J. court rules blogger is not protected under shield law in porn company defamation case. A blogger sued for defamation because of her writings about a Freehold software company is not a journalist and is not covered by a law that protects them from revealing confidential sources, an appellate court ruled today.

In a decision that attempts to better define who is protected by New Jersey’s shield law, the court said Shellee Hale’s writings about Too Much Media LLC, which supplies software to online pornography websites, amounted to nothing more than a letter-to-the-editor in a newspaper. Hale, a former Microsoft employee and a mother of five from Washington state, contended she was acting as a journalist when she posted comments to a message board about a security breach at TMM and allegations that its owners had threatened her. She argued the postings were part of her research into a larger story about the online pornography industry.

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Not sure how I feel about this. While I can see that we can't just arbitrarily slam or accuse someone in our postings without supporting proof, I do feel we should be able to use the "freedom of speech" approach to what we write about. Your thoughts?

[chadknowslaw]

"freedom of speech" only protects us from the government punishing people for what they say, it does NOT protect us from civil liability.

I think the pressing issue is "when does someone become a journalist for the purpose of shield laws?"

I know that every punk-ass bitch that posts a page on Blogger and gets 3 hits is not a journalist, while Pam's House Blend would be considered journalism; I just don't know where to draw the line between them.

[Bec]

So there's no real definition for who is protected via the shield laws? That's an awfully large grey area for judges to determine who is protected and who isn't.

[gaybucks_chip]

In my opinion, this sounds like a vindictive action on the part of TMM. (which, to those of you not familiar with their corporate name, are the people that own the NATS affiliate program and SegPay.)

As I understand it, truth is an affirmative defense to defamation, and I believe that to prevail in a defamation action, one has to prove that the person defaming posted, wrote, or stated material that was demonstrably false, that they knew the material was false, and also that they posted or stated the information with the intent of causing harm.

TMM, as far as I know, admitted that they did have a huge security breach in which all customer and affiliate emails (and most everything else) in NATS systems was available to someone who got hold of a master user/pass that gave admin access to a lot of NATS installations.

Additionally, most of this was also posted at GFY and as far as I know, they haven't been sued.

So in my opinion, it totally seems like an action taken against someone who can't afford to defend herself, probably with an intent to force a settlement, since I can't imagine how there's be much of a way to show those three factors needed to prove defamation at trial, given that TMM themselves acknowledged and wrote about the security breach.

Also, again reading GFY, she would not be the first person to allege that TMM had threatened to sue her into oblivion for saying not-nice things about them, no secret there either.