Hey, we’re at least as journalistic as Maureen Dowd is
Mar 14, 2007 Medialites
Over on Ron’s other blog, Likelihood of Confusion, Ron has repeatedly argued against the idea of a journalist’s press shield law (see, e.g., here.) One objection is that, in the modern blogospheric era, who exactly is a journalist is a complicated question. Sure, you’ve got newspaper and television reporters. But don’t bloggers also report news? Don’t some journalists provide commentary on the news, just as bloggers do? How do we decide who is entitled to claim this privilege? The first amendment certainly shouldn’t allow the government to decide that certain reporters are “real” journalists and certain reporters aren’t. If everyone is a journalist, though, where does that leave the legal system?
Well, I see that France — which of course doesn’t have the same first amendment we do — has resolved this problem. It simply decides that some journalists don’t count.
PARIS – A new law in France makes it a crime for anyone who is not a professional journalist to film real-world violence and distribute the images on the Internet.
“Real world violence” can range from simple assault to murder, and it includes acts by law enforcement in the exercise of their duties.
The law was allegedly prompted by a desire to prevent something called “happy slapping,” which seems to be a broad term for the situation when teenagers film their friends committing an assault and share the resulting video. But as usual, it’s a law designed to solve a “problem” (without evidence that there is a problem) by passing a much broader law that criminalizes significantly more innocent conduct. Reporters without Borders criticizes the law, for what that’s worth. The Weekly Standard also criticizes the law, noting this little tidbit:
Asked who would remain free to film violence in the street under the new law, Jean-Marc Berlioz, Sarkozy’s spokesman at the Ministry of the Interior, reiterated, “A journalist is someone who has a Press Card” issued by the professional association, the Convention Collective de Journalistes.
Lovely. On the other hand, various state press-shield laws in the U.S., not to mention McCain-Feingold, come close to forcing us to make the same distinction between “real” journalists and mere amateurs.
Inexplicably, some commentators try to link this to the Josh Wolf case in California:
As the new French law shows, democratic societies and totalitarian states hold an equally deep suspicion of citizen journalists. In the United States, the journalist currently serving the longest sentence is blogger Josh Wolf. He is in jail for refusing a court order to turn over unpublished footage of street protesters setting a police car ablaze. 24-year-old Wolf has become a symbol of the need to protect free speech, even in the world’s largest democracy.
But that’s just laziness, or stupidity, on the part of journalists. Wolf presents almost exactly the opposite issue. He’s trying to claim that he should get a special privilege because he’s a journalist, a privilege that isn’t available to the average person: the right to refuse to provide evidence to a court.
