This is all well and good, and on First Amendment grounds we fully support the right of bloggers to be granted the same editorial protection against lawsuits that news organizations have. But there is a compelling argument on the other side, as well.
Say that blogs are granted the same protections as news organizations. What is to stop, say, corporations or trade unions from setting up stealth blogs to promote their agenda, while collecting funds from the public or to spend on ads to promote their own interested point of view?
What's more, campaign finance laws are there for a reason, and it's a little presumptuous of bloggers to hold themselves above the system. Many partisan bloggers are little more than political activists, and as activists they raise funds for their own pet political causes, something reporters don't -- and can't -- do. In this, they should be included under campaign finance laws.
Without getting into the infinite more obvious examples of partisan media figures who are "little more than political activists," I give you Charles Krauthammer, writing in the December 5, 2003 Washington Post, soliciting funds for the Republican National Committee.
Some clinicians consider this delusion -- that Americans can get their news from only one part of the political spectrum -- the gravest of all. They report that no matter how many times sufferers in padded cells are presented with flash cards with the symbols ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, Time, Newsweek, New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times -- they remain unresponsive, some in a terrifying near-catatonic torpor.
The sad news is that there is no cure. But there is hope. There are many fine researchers seeking that cure. Your donation to the BDS Foundation, no matter how small, can help. Mailing address: Republican National Committee, Washington, D.C., Attention: psychiatric department. Just make sure your amount does not exceed $2,000 ($4,000 for a married couple).
Stop pretending that our news media only consists of "reporters" and that all these hypothetical "reporter Gods" adhere to some hypothetical system of ethics which sounds nice but does not actually exist in the world in which we exist.