Citizen Journalists Deserve Freedom of the Press Protections

Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at U.C.L.A., who writes the Volokh Conspiracy blog, has a real provocative op-ed in today's New York Times. He writes that bloggers deserve the same first amendment protections the press is entitled to...

Because of the Internet, anyone can be a journalist. Some so-called Weblogs - Internet-based opinion columns published by ordinary people - have hundreds of thousands of readers. I run a blog with more than 10,000 daily readers. We often publish news tips from friends or readers, some of which come with a condition of confidentiality.

The First Amendment can't give special rights to the established news media and not to upstart outlets like ours. Freedom of the press should apply to people equally, regardless of who they are, why they write or how popular they are.