Bloggers Reporting and Society

Accordign to this article at Wired, “Depending on whom you ask, bloggers are either “citizen journalists” who are democratizing media, or bloviating loudmouths posting ill-formed opinions on personal websites between trips to the fridge. ”

I wonder which I fall into. The main topic of the article is wether or not bloggers should be covered by the 1st amendment rights that protect journalists and their sources. Of course this is directly related to the recent Kottke posting about Ken Jennings and the Jeopardy saga that I talked about here several months ago.

The question, I think, should not be are they covered by 1st amendment rights but does the current interpretation of the 1st amendment accurately reflect the developments of technology and global compression. As technology allows us to cross borders and reach new achievements that we considered the stuff of science fiction only several years ago we should begin to re-evaluate the rules with which we govern ourselves. As we advance technologically we should flex our interpretation of our rules accordingly.

By this I do not mean that every jackass with a keyboard and a Blogger account should be allowed to spew insider information over the internet. But, we do need to carefullyre- examine what is and is not normal and acceptable.

Just another opinion from the resident “bloviating loudmouth”!