In case you missed it, back in May, Dick Durbin announced he didn’t think bloggers were covered by the First Amendment. Durbin wants to institutionalize the media via legislation, which in essence, makes them more dangerous and less accountable. It makes the media no more than the mouthpiece of the government by being the entity that makes their speech legitimate.
Durbin said all of this back in May. He repeated it again on June 26th with an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times. This was my favorite bit:
To those who feel politicians shouldn’t define who a journalist is, I’d remind them that they likely live in one of the 49 states, like Illinois, where elected officials have already made that decision.
The leaks of classified information about the NSA’s surveillance operations and an ongoing Justice Department investigation into who disclosed secret documents to the Associated Press have brought this issue back to the forefront and raised important questions about the freedom of speech, freedom of the press and how our nation defines journalism.
I can summarize Durbin’s op-ed in one sentence:
He wants citizens and bloggers like me to sit down and shut up.
This isn’t about protecting anything but secrets — and the rear ends of those ‘elected officials’ keeping them. If one thing can be said to be universal about politicians is that their primary concern is controlling the narrative. What Durbin is really sponsoring here is state sanctioned censorship.
Professor Glenn Reynolds takes Durbin to task:
Personally, I think a journalist is someone who’s doing journalism, whether they get paid for it or not.
And Durbin is a constitutional ignoramus if he thinks that when the Framers talked about freedom of the press, they were talking about freedom for the press as an institution.
Journalism is indeed an activity, not a profession, and though we often refer to institutionalized media as “the press,” we should remember that James Madison talked about freedom of the press as “freedom in the use of the press” — that is, the freedom to publish, not simply freedom for media organizations.
YES!
Also:
Over the past few years, a lot of big scoops have come from people other than the institutional press — from James O’Keefe’s exposés of ACORN and voter fraud, to Edward Snowden’s release of NSA secrets via Glenn Greenwald, who talking head David Gregory suggested is not a “real journalist.”
Durbin’s pontifications about who’s entitled to press freedom were uttered in the course of promoting a federal “shield law” that would allow those “real” journalists to conceal their sources. I oppose such laws in general, but to the extent that they exist, they should protect everyone who’s doing journalism, regardless of where their paycheck comes from.
I have never been paid for what I write. Maybe someday I will, but that was never the goal. For me, it was about getting more information out there because the media that Durbin would consider ‘legitimate’ wasn’t doing it and, for the most part, still aren’t. If Durbin had his way, perhaps Professor Reynolds’ op-ed wouldn’t even be published.
I remind the Senator from Illinois, home of the President who touted the most transparent administration in history, yet again:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Related: Free Speech In Obama’s America Edition
Also 7/9/13 : Is this Column Legitimate?
Further, a government that grants privileges also has the power to take them away. A shield law would make those designated as “legitimate journalists” beholden to powerful politicians–especially when, as today, most journalists are ideologically sympathetic to the party in power. The Durbin shield proposal looks less like real protection than a protection racket.
UPDATE: Linked by Doug Ross – THANKS!