Thomas Shevroy reviews Scott Grant’s new book We’re All Journalists Now. The “new media” and the rise of the blogosphere and its role in reporting and its interaction with the traditional press is a very interesting topic to me. I’ve been blogging off and on for almost six years now and have been reading blogs for almost seven or eight.
Here are some excerpts from the review:
Gant’s thesis is simple, straightforward and stated in the title. He is suggesting that the boundaries between professional journalism and the communications of ordinary citizens are collapsing, if they have not already collapsed. Moreover, legal rulings have provided a mixed and confusing picture of current professional protections of journalism. Gant steps into this fluid context with an intervention that is both conceptual and practical. He wants his readers to understand the nature of changes that are occurring, and he wants practical changes in law and policy that reflect these broader underlying structural transformations.
I agree with Gant here, that traditional boundaries have fallen and will continue to fall. I also suspect that there will eventually be a Supreme Court case that features a blogger or at least addresses the issues of whether bloggers have the same sort of protections as the traditional press.
Gant in his book writes that the protection of the press does not come from legal opinions like I think most people seem to think.
Where much of the press’ protection comes from, then, is not legal opinions, but the credentialing process. The press is given special access, Gant argues, for several reasons: because of the mistaken belief that the Constitution supports them, because of more general sense that access is “beneficial to society,” because of explicit legal rules or other regulations that extend such privileges, or simply due to ad hoc decisions on the part of those in positions of authority. When new media practitioners have sought access to the same sets of entitlements, they have often met resistance from their “professional” peers. The online paper, WORLDNETDAILY¸ was refused press access to the House and Senate galleries for more than a year, until the Standing Committee for Correspondents changed its position and allowed admission. Institutional rules differ between government branches, and across state and local jurisdictions, but the practice of credentialing conventional media organizations is widespread.
Also interesting is reviewer’s warning of the potential problems of lowering the bar between the professional press and non-professional press:
Most obviously, line-drawing may be difficult, especially in terms of access. While there are many interesting, insightful, thoughtful, and provocative digital media sources worth giving access to spaces from [*131] which they are now excluded, there are also online bloggers and news writers who tread the boundaries, not just of legitimacy, but of rationality. There is also a danger that the protections now given to professional journalists could be retracted without a concomitant expansion of First Amendment protections to the rest of us. The imprisonment of journalists, and expanding the reach of libel law, does probably not bode well for First Amendment protections overall. To Gant’s credit, he addresses some of these counterarguments. Whether he has provided compelling responses can be left to the reader to judge.
This was a good review and sounds like an interesting book. If only I had more time to read.
