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Abrams: Bloggers shoud get same shield law privileges as journalists

Floyd Abrams, one of the most noted First Amendment lawyers around, says he thinks many bloggers should be entitled to the same protection against revealing sources traditional journalists get under the First Amendment. "I think a blogger who communicates with and tries to communicate with thousands of people is not less deserving than a journalist who may communicate with a smaller audience through a small-town newspaper," the attorney said. "There should be protection so long as information was obtained for the purpose of dissemination to the public at large in some sort of analogous way to what 'journalists' do."

Still, he said he felt that bloggers who confine their comments to matters of a personal nature should not enjoy any special privilege. "I don't think one can sustain the position that everyone who has a Web site that they may put comments about their former girlfriends on is therefore a journalist," he said.

Shield laws in 31 states protect journalists from having to testify or turn over their notes to authorities. "The whole issue now is, who is a reporter?" said the president of the Texas Press Association,Wanda Cash. "I have great discomfort with that. Is Drudge a journalist? Probably. Is the disgruntled refinery worker who puts up a blog about Exxon a journalist? I don't think so.The problem is, who decides?"

More from The Sun:

While the new phenomenon of blogs highlights the potential pitfalls involved in creating a reporters' privilege, courts have struggled for years with privilege claims from people who are not members of the traditional press corps. One such episode stemmed from the highly publicized conviction and subsequent acquittal of a Rhode Island socialite, Claus von Bulow, on charges that he attempted to murder his wife, Sunny, in 1979 and 1980. During a civil lawsuit that followed, an "intimate friend" of Mr. von Bulow, Andrea Reynolds, asserted reporter's privilege on the grounds that she was preparing to write about his case for a German magazine and for the New York Post. She also said she was preparing a book. The courts turned aside her claim, primarily because Ms. Reynolds did not produce any evidence that she had ever published a word about the case.

In a somewhat similar instance in Texas, a part-time college instructor and aspiring author, Vanessa Leggett, tried to claim reporters' privilege to withhold information she gathered while preparing a book about a Houston man, Robert Angleton, who was acquitted of murdering his wife in 1997. In 2001, Ms. Leggett was jailed for nearly six months for refusing to cooperate with a federal grand jury investigating the case. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals court found that no privilege exists for journalists facing a grand jury subpoena. It did not squarely confront the issue of whether or not to consider Ms. Leggett a reporter.

Abrams said that given the sentiments of some justices, traditional journalists could actually benefit from being lumped in with the bloggers. "For some courts and some members of the public, the image of journalist as romantic hero had faded, but the notion of bloggers on duty to catch Dan Rather has not," Abrams said.

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