A Federal Appeals Court Rules Bloggers Have the Same Protections as Other Journalists

          A Federal Appeals Court has ruled in a defamation case that a blogger has the same legal protections as journalists who are trained, professional, and engaged in conflict-of-interest disclosure. 

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the defamation and negligence case, in which the defendant blogger had been held liable for $2.5 million, because the jury had not been instructed that negligence had to be proved.  In order to prove negligence, a defendant must have failed to “act with a reasonable level of care” and whether the author made the statements “in a good faith and reasonable belief that they were true.”  The Court noted the Supreme Court’s observation of the increasing difficulty of drawing a line between “traditional” journalists and other speakers.  Thus, although it did not define the blogger as a “journalist,” the Court afforded her the same protections by applying the same standard of proof as applies to professional journalists.  In fact, the Court did not require the defendant to adhere to certain professional journalistic standards, such as seeking both sides of a story, in order to be protected. 

The ruling proves that the freedom of the printing press is a freedom enjoyed by all, not only those who belong to a particular profession, whether one prints handbills or posts commentary electronically in blogs on the Internet.  Indeed, all freedoms and rights belong to all the people.  No freedoms or rights are limited to a few.