So, little JesusWhore and Pimple are “journalists” by this definition, but Pam isn’t?

Riiiiggghhhhttt.

Isn’t this being perpetrated by the same jerks who thought the record industry had to be saved from it’s own bad business decisions to not go electronic?

Interesting.

To to be a journalist in Chuck Schumer’s eyes, you have to both have a boss (at this point, you generous readers and Jane would count as my boss, but Jane doesn’t have a boss, for example) and that boss’ company must disseminate news on some other medium, in addition to the Toobz.

Now perhaps my interpretation is waaay off here, but it looks to me like this law is going to effectively nullify the journalism careers of those wonderful DC village sycophants who currently write for POLITICO.  Sure, they have editors, an advertising department, a legal department, travel budgets, a million dollar business model, and every aspect of a normal newspaper… except they don’t actually publish anything offline.

Is Chuckie Schumer really gonna strip POLITICO of their journalism credentials?

How about the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (they stopped printing a newspaper a few motnhs ago but maintain an online presence)?

In addition, think of the longterm ridiculousness of this bill… physical newspapers and magazines ARE GOING AWAY.  Existing news media companies will be shifting all of their resources online over the course of the next few decades if they haven’t already done so.  The main thing keeping us attached to dead tree periodicals is the older generations who insist on them not going away.  Once they all die off, nobody is gonna buy the daily paper anymore… as it is, very few under 40s buy newspapers today.

This should really come as no surprise—given Schumer’s love of overreaching copyright and other corporate protection legislation. The goal, of course, it to protect the larger media players by marginalizing citizen journalists. In the long run this strategy is doomed to failure. Traditional newspapers and TV journalism have been rapidly loosing influence and audiences for the past few years. It is only a matter of time before they die the painful death they so deserve.

Nonetheless, one can pretty easily imagine some type of incorporated blogger’s co-op which re-pays the bloggers, out of dues, some small amount per-post. This would seem to satisfy the bill’s requirements, and then offer the shield protection.

Ironically, the Onion maintains newsboxes in some major cities and their writers are thus “journalists”.

Politico is home and dry. They publish a small print version there they demand insane advertising rates and that is delivered on the hill.
Salon, Slate, Daily Kos, Huffington Post, TPM could be in trouble. Even the now all web Christian Science Monitor.

Politico publishes a freely distributed paper version, much like the Onion.

HuffPo is dead, though.

If this had happened in the early 2000s I would have thought the target was Indymedia. In 2009, I think you’re probably right that this is an attack on bloggers, and Indymedia and similar sites are just going to be collateral damage.

A journalist is someone who gathers information with the intention of making it public. How can we tell whether someone intended to make something public? Hash it out in court.

There’s your definition. It’s not all that complicated if you don’t have an ulterior motive.

democrats:  saying Fox news is ok, HuffPo isn’t.

Wow.

If it’s any consolation, this means Drudge isn’t a journalist either. Getting to say that officially is, of course, not worth the price of admission.

Now perhaps my interpretation is waaay off here, but it looks to me like this law is going to effectively nullify the journalism careers of those wonderful DC village sycophants who currently write for POLITICO.  Sure, they have editors, an advertising department, a legal department, travel budgets, a million dollar business model, and every aspect of a normal newspaper… except they don’t actually publish anything offline.

The key point seems to be that you have to draw a salary from a corporate or non-corporate entity—in other words, citizen journalists (the modern-day version of 18th-century pamphleteers and 19th-century muckraking authors) are SOL, and hurrah for the all-mighty corporation and the Beltway access-journalism establishment.

The requirement for alternative outlet mediums is likely something they’ll drop as a “compromise”—for now it’s just an additional way of ensuring that only employees of those incumbents who vaulted the expensive barriers to entry decades ago can enjoy the shield law. As Ms Kate says, it’s a little corporate welfare for an industry notorious for making bad business decisions and for those who make proper obeisance to the high and mighty on Capitol Hill.

But the important thing is that the journalist work for an entity that can be easily bullied if an employee gets above himself. The only surprising thing is that they didn’t, as they usually do in these matters, throw credentialism into the mix. It goes to show you how worthless those expensive J-school degrees really are.

Nonetheless, one can pretty easily imagine some type of incorporated blogger’s co-op which re-pays the bloggers, out of dues, some small amount per-post. This would seem to satisfy the bill’s requirements, and then offer the shield protection.

Yeah, this will probably be the work-around to the this amendment to the “Free Flow of Information Act.” The co-op will also provide news agency/wire service aggregation of member posts. Wasteful and inefficient, but on the plus side they’ll have to issue press credentials to anyone who’s a member of such a co-op.

If this bill is passed, I predict a ‘zine revival.

This should really come as no surprise—given Schumer’s love of overreaching copyright and other corporate protection legislation.

Yep, the MSM has been very good to Chuck Schumer and his career. Another underlying and related motivation is that Schumer, for all that I like him on a lot of issues, is a notorious camera whore even by the standards of the Hill. Getting quoted on a blog doesn’t carry nearly quite the visceral thrill for him as being featured on one of the slowly dying evening newscasts.

For Schumer’s generation of Boomer politicians, Internet-based journalism offers no real upside in what’s supposed to be a virtuous adversarial relationship between politicians and the “Fourth Estate”—it can’t be controlled or co-opted and it doesn’t always cater to a lowest-common-denominator audience that happily and uncritically eats up 10-second soundbites and preening photo-op gestures.

I don’t see the problem.

To review:

A journalist to one who “obtains the information sought while working as a salaried employee of, or independent contractor for, an entity–

a. that disseminates information by print, broadcast, cable, satellite, mechanical, photographic, electronic, or other means ; and
b. that—
1. publishes a newspaper, book, magazine, or other periodical ;.
...
3. operates a programming service ; or
4. operates a news agency ...”

Unless there is something else in there, e.g.   specifically excluding the internet from “electronic or other means,” or specifically saying that a blog is not a “news agency,”  Bloggers fit this definition fine.  A blogger can be an employee of or a contractor for an entity that disseminates information by electronic or other means and that publishes a periodical (the blog itself) or operates a news agency or programming service (for both, again, the blog itself).  Why not?

Seriously, is someone in Congress going to argue, and a judge accept, that the online version of the New York Times, New Yorker, Scientific America, or Guns ‘n Ammo is not a “periodical?”  Or that the internet is not an “electronic or other” means of disseminating information?

To be really secure, all any blogger would have to do is fill out simple, cheap paperwork establishing the blog as an “entity” under state law - as an LLC or non-profit or corporation or partnership or whatever - and then hire him/herself as a salaried employee or independent contractor, as you chose.  The salary can be a dollar a year and a judge can’t say nothin’ - because heck, if that works for Citibank, why not Pandagon?

The key point seems to be that you have to draw a salary from a corporate or non-corporate entity—in other words, citizen journalists (the modern-day version of 18th-century pamphleteers and 19th-century muckraking authors) are SOL, and hurrah for the all-mighty corporation and the Beltway access-journalism establishment.

Actually, my reading says that you need to not only work for some entity as a salaried employee, but that entity must distribute some of its content through a medium other than the Internet.

The reason POLITICO would be exempt from the rule isn’t the fact that they are a corportae entity, it’s the fact that they distribute a dead tree newspaper on Capitol Hill.

If it were simply a matter of having a corporate entity with paid writers, Daily Kos would likely be protected, as it IS a corporation… Kos Media, LLC.  Additionally, Markos does employee a small handful of paid editors to write for him now (Moulitsas reported revenue of $1 Million last year for Daily Kos).

This isn’t just the independent bloggers that would get hit, this is anyone who runs a blog and only produces online content.  Thus Huffington Post, Drudge Report, and Daily Kos would all be impacted.  Obviously, a lot of rightwing bloggers would get hit to, like Allahpundit, Gateway Pundit, and Atlas Shrugs, but that benefit doesn’t make this bill worth squat.

The Chuck Schumer definition of a transportation device is as follows:

a. Must have one or more wheels.  The wheel or wheels must touch the ground at all times.

b. Must have some arrangement for seating the operator and passengers.

c. Must be pulled by one or more horses of a nationally recognized breed.

d. Must be equipped with a whip for motivating the horse or horses…

DTG in STL:  I don’t see how you get to your narrow reading.

1. You don’t have to be a salaried employee, according to the text posted.  You can be an independent contractor instead - that is expressly given as alternative.

2. There is nothing that says the entity has to disseminate information in more than one media, or in a media other than the internet.  The entity must disseminate information in some, unnamed (“or other”) media and also do one of the four categories of things listed in (b).  Disseminating information on the internet, and “operating a news agency” fits the text.  Nothing there says what “medium” the news agency needs to work in.  And nothing in there defines “periodical” as dead-tree-magazine.  If you disseminate information over the web and update your blog on a regular basis (and say, add those weird issue and volume numbers at the header for credit), why wouldn’t that fit the bill?

Actually, my reading says that you need to not only work for some entity as a salaried employee, but that entity must distribute some of its content through a medium other than the Internet.

As I said, I think they’ll drop that aspect under enough pressure. If they keep it, anyone can print up 100 copies of a dead-tree quartterly newsletter and send it out for free to friends and family. Another possible avenue is to claim that this is all fodder for an eventual book (or series of books). In some ways, the non-Internet medium requirement is much easier to circumvent than the salaried employee requirement.

Keep in mind, the shield law isn’t there to protect the publisher/broadcaster (i.e. the corporate entity), it’s there to protect the individual writer/researcher and his source. What usually happens in these shield cases is that the publisher/broadcaster that goes to bat for their employee or contractor by providing legal resources and other support. But there’s nothing in the shield law to say that an individual citizen-journalist couldn’t pay to defend himself, or find a firm or advocacy group to defend him pro bono.

In the past, that proviso wasn’t required, because it was assumed you needed a corporation to publish and distribute your journalism to a mass audience. Now that the Internet has changed that situation, they’re trying to weasel around the issue by putting in professional employment and dead-tree media requirements.

I’d agree with Pam that there are better alternatives to the shield law. The sources it ultimately protects are basically whistleblowers, and whistleblowers should be protected whether they’re talking to the government or to a journalist, citizen or otherwise.

You don’t have to be a salaried employee, according to the text posted.  You can be an independent contractor instead - that is expressly given as alternative.

The key point is that you have to be paid by some corporate entity, for-profit or non-profit, for your work. That’s not something that happens for most citizen-journalists and bloggers. The work-around is these co-ops, which also solve the second issue.

The entity must disseminate information in some, unnamed (“or other”) media and also do one of the four categories of things listed in (b).

There’s the rub—all of those four options are intended by the amendment’s sponsor to have a relatively high barrier to entry. Again, though, they’re not taking into account the work-arounds which, under this law, will as an unintended consequence see Congress having to issue press credentials to people they never would have had to in the past:

“hi, I work for the Maoist Blogger’s Collective [they him $12 a year to excerpt his blog postings], which operates a news agency and wire distribution service [i.e. a news aggregation site] for its 500 readers [who are also the sum total of its paid reader base—each pays $2 per month]. That officially defines me as a journalist under your own law, so give me my press pass.”

If Congress wants to start defining who is and isn’t a journalist, they’re opening up a nice can of worms (worms with JD degrees) for themselves.

Why don’t they just call it the Village Protection And Anti-Democracy Act of 2009 and be honest about it?

Schumer is a corporate centrist whore of the highest rank.  It has come to something when the man’s claim to fame is “not as bad as the man I replaced”, which we can call the Karl Donitz school of being a Senator.

I.F. Stone wouldn’t have been protected under this definition. He wasn’t an employee or an independent contractor, he was the fscking owner.

And cereal: if you want to spend a few years in jail while you pro bono lawyer works their way up through the system and finally convinces Robert, Scalia and Thomas that an irregularly-published single-author blog not listed in any periodical index nonetheless meets the definition, be my guest. (I think one might have better luck with the idea that anything with an RSS feed is a wire service, though.)

I see a chipping away at net neutrality and in addition to what’s been said a way to silence government whistle blowers. If protection is denied the nets freelancers then who’s Sibel Edmonds turn to? She wouldn’t get an invite to an off the record salon at Katherine Weymouth’s who is about publishing less depressing stories - “Prozac Print” Journalism. The Village hates the internet for the liberal free speech found there to give it the presses 1st Amendment protections is unthinkable.

Hmm - blogs as news agencies or wire services, maybe?

You can’t even do a workaround on paying someone $1:

The term ‘covered person’ means a person who regularly gathers, prepares, collects, photographs, records, writes, edits, reports, or publishes news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public for a substantial portion of the person’s livelihood or for substantial financial gain and includes a supervisor, employer, parent, subsidiary, or affiliate of such covered person.

This is all about preserving traditional media and cutting off blogs/citizen journalists from participating as members of legitimate media.

This is all about preserving traditional media and cutting off blogs/citizen journalists from participating as members of legitimate media.

Well, with no work-around you’re absolutely correct. Bottom line, if you don’t have a boss and a corporate entity above you and commissioning your writing, you don’t count as a legitimate journalist. Thomas Paine, Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair and many others are rolling in their graves.

Wait, doesn’t this shield law exempt local newpapers, as well?

If they aren’t an AP outlet, and only print newspapers, or are the boss themselves, it doesn’t count.

Why does this only work for corporate puppets?

Do you recall their definition for ‘vehicle’ for fuel-efficiency subsidies required four wheels, even though many fuel efficient small cars have three?

If they aren’t an AP outlet, and only print newspapers, or are the boss themselves, it doesn’t count.

The shield law doesn’t protect publishers, it protects journalists from revealing confidential sources. A publisher/broadcaster will generally back up the journalist in making his case that the shield applies to his source, but until recently a publisher/broadcaster was not a required party in a shield action, just an assumed party. This amendment is an attempt to “rectify” this issue.

It’s especially disturbing because (due to bad business decisions and screwed-up priorities) investigative reporting budgets have been gutted in most major media outlets, leaving that kind of journalism to citizen-journalists and part-timers, as well as to a few non-profit foundations and start-ups.

Cereal is right.  Pandagon publishes an electronic magazine in the form of periodic posts* by independent contractors. 

I assume Pandagon is a properly formed entity, and that posters are duly contracted?  Certainly HuffPo, DKos, Drudge etc. qualify.  Smaller blogs that have filed as sole proprietorships are fine too.  Those who haven’t formally filed as a business or 501(c)(3) might be out in the cold.

* At the very least, “Friday Random Ten” is periodic in the relevant sense.

This whole “shield law” idea came about because of the Judy Miller and Matt Cooper fiascoes, where they went to jail (or almost did) instead of revealing their anonymous sources and The Village went apeshit.  I can see both sides of the issue:  on the one hand it’s be nice to be able to force reporters to out those “Administration officials who spoke with us only on condition that their identity be withheld” when said sources are disseminating lies and propaganda, but on the other hand true whistleblowers need to be shielded to prevent recriminations up to and including their lives being put in danger.  Who gets to make the call on that?

This may be a situation where the best law to make is no law.  We haven’t yet worked out as a society where the line should be drawn or who gets to decide whether a source should be outed on pain of jail time.  A shield law protects the status quo (and Schumer’s “true scotsman” amendment about having it only apply to what HE considers “journalists” is both laughable and sad), but we aren’t sure that that status quo is where we want to be.  Maybe we SHOULD throw reporters in jail if they don’t reveal their sources; that forces us to look more closely at the circumstances, and actually deal with the situation that led to them being jailed.  Exempting them from that scrutiny does our national discourse no favors.

Schumer outed himself as a scumbag when he voted to approve Michael “It’s not torture if I don’t acknowledge the definition of torture” Mukasey. Fuck him. Surely no one is surprised by this bullshit.

Also, that is a hilariously smug pic of Schumer up there.  Nice choice!

Cereal is right.  Pandagon publishes an electronic magazine in the form of periodic posts* by independent contractors. 

I assume Pandagon is a properly formed entity, and that posters are duly contracted?  Certainly HuffPo, DKos, Drudge etc. qualify.  Smaller blogs that have filed as sole proprietorships are fine too.  Those who haven’t formally filed as a business or 501(c)(3) might be out in the cold.

* At the very least, “Friday Random Ten” is periodic in the relevant sense.

That may be so, but as Pam pointed out above, the “salaried employee” provision still wouldn’t pass muster.  The bill doesn’t just say that someone must be merely compensated for their work, it says that they must be receiving a substantial portion of their livelihood for their work.  Paying someone $1 or even $1,000 per year wouldn’t cut it.  The only people who MIGHT be protected are professional bloggers who do the work as a full-time job and pay their bills with money made from blogging.

Which takes us to Daily Kos... the law isn’t written to place shield limitations on blogs, it is written to place shield limitations bloggers.  Since Markos Moulitsas personally could claim to make a substantial portion of his livelihood from his blogging, he might theoretically be able to have his own contributions protected by shield laws… but contributors to his blog, 99.9% of whom aren’t paid a dime, wouldn’t be able to claim shield protection.  Since the majority of DKos’ content isn’t written by Moulitsas himself, his blog would mostly be unprotected.  And while he has become successful enough to start compensating a small handful of his contributors (fewer than ten), I don’t believe their work for him is the primary means of income for any of them - most of them have regular jobs outside of DKos as far as I am aware, and get a little extra cash for their contributions to the site.

Cereal is right.  Pandagon publishes an electronic magazine in the form of periodic posts* by independent contractors. 

I can’t quite find my copy of Harrod’s librarians’ glossary (*), but I’m pretty certain a blog doesn’t count as a periodical by our standards in that it isn’t published at (i) a regular interval of (ii) more than one day and (iii) published in discrete issues.  You’d have real problems asserting a blog was a periodical under law, I think.

(*) And, no, the irony of this doesn’t escape me.

Pandagon publishes an electronic magazine in the form of periodic posts* by independent contractors.

Not quite. Does Pandagon:

>> 1. publish a newspaper, book, magazine, or other periodical?

No. Beyond PiatoR’s official librarian’s definition, “periodical,” when grouped with the other three items, is meant to refer to dead-tree media or at least media produced by a corporate entity. One can argue that the language is vague, but at the very least it means it should be clarified to include electronic media produced by individuals.

>> 2. operate a radio or television broadcast station, network, cable system, or satellite carrier, or a channel or programming service for any such station, network, system, or carrier?

No. Amanda’s video segments on reproductive issues don’t count as broadcasting in the sense described here.

>> 3. operate a programming service?

No. No-one here is producing packaged content primarily for distribution to brand affiliates.

>> 4. operate a news agency or wire service?

No. No-one here is producing packaged content primarily for distribution to customers.

So part b. of Schumer’s requirement for defining a journalist is not met. And I also doubt that any of the Pandagonians earn a substantial portion of their income, either as employees, contractors or owners, from this site.

Smaller blogs that have filed as sole proprietorships are fine too.  Those who haven’t formally filed as a business or 501(c)(3) might be out in the cold.

The point is that they shouldn’t be, any more than those who contribute freely to open-source software projects like Linux without a corporate umbrella should be left out in the cold. Especially when the large corporate players are dropping the ball on quality of product, as in the case of the MSM.

The most generous reading of this proposed amendment is that it’s vaguely and sloppily worded.

This may be a situation where the best law to make is no law.

I’d be inclined to agree, especially at the Federal level. The various levels of anonymous sourcing are fine and useful as is, and a good investigative journalist always backs those sources up with corroborating evidence, statements and data to avoid defamation lawsuits and the like. As in most investigations, the anonymous source is generally the starting point and not the tentpole.

Beyond those rare cases where the reporter has been negligent enough to rest his entire story on one anonymous source and has been called to a witness stand, the state has no business in forcing reporters—any reporters—to name their sources by threat of contempt of court.

A good reporter will also make an effort to avoid being used as a propaganda conduit by a source. But the Beltway “access journalism” culture means that Federal politicians (Schumer included) see that particular bug in reporters like Judy Miller as features.

Schumer’s legislative staff are certainly not coordinating with his campaign staff. 

I got an e-mail today from him asking for money and I told him putting forward laws like this was not the way to get money from his internet list.  I hope many other people on his list also responded in kind.

Not on topic, but the public option just got voted down. Healthcare reform is now largely pointless.

frankly, i don’t think this bill withstands judicial scrutiny, under the equal protection clause. if it actually passes, it should be immediately challenged by the ACLU. if we were talking tax law, congress might have a toe to stand on. but we’re not, and they don’t.

Are you guys just figuring out what a loser Schumer is?  The most dangerous place in D.C. is between Chuckie and a TV camera.  He is an incredibly smug jerk.  I look forward to the day that he leaves the Senate, preferably defeated, but out one way or another.

Schumer is a corporate centrist whore of the highest rank.

Schumer is being a douche on this issue, but I don’t think it’s right to characterize him as an out-and-out corporate shill of the highest rank when he’s one of the only Democratic Senators speaking out in favor of a public option in healthcare reform.  I realize there are tons of Democrats in Congress who are even more progressive than he is on healthcare reform and any number of other issues, but he’s one of the few Democratic Senators (not Congresspeople) that seems to be on the right side of the healthcare debate in his advocacy.

If anybody caught any of today’s Senate hearings on healthcare reform, they would have seen old Chuckie reaming Sen. Grassley over the public option, pointing out that it’s total hypocrisy to claim on one hand that Medicare is a great system while on the other hand to claim that a public option would be disasterous.

Again, there’s no defending the anti-shield bill he’s pushing or any number of other non-progressive moves he’s made, I just don’t think it’s fair to complete dismiss everything he’s done right in the process and brand him as a “corporate centrist of the highest rank”.  It implies that he’s just as much of a corporate whore as Max Baucus, and well… be serious.  As Democratic corporate centrists in the U.S. Senate go, I can name a ton who are of a higher rank than Chuck Schumer.

Things aren’t so black and white “you’re either with us or you’re against us” when it comes to a lot of these pols.  Obviously, our elected leaders in DC as a whole tend to be a lot less progressive than the nation they represent, but they aren’t all equally bad.  Some are bad on eveything, and some others are bad on some things.  Schumer ranks as “bad on some things”.

Not on topic, but the public option just got voted down. Healthcare reform is now largely pointless.

A big blow, but this isn’t the final-final bill that’s being negotiated.  It’s the Senate Bill.  The House Bill WILL contain a public option, and the ultimate fight over it will occur when the two bills are merged in reconciliation.

There’s no way to see what happened in the Senate today as a good thing, but it also shouldn’t be regarded as the final say on the public option.

BTW, it should be noted that the public otpion got voted down today in the Senate Finance Committee, not the entire Senate.  So this isn’t even the final Senate Bill we’re talking about, it’s just one of two different bills being crafted in the Senate (the other coming from the HELP Committee) which will have to be merged into one final Senate Bill before a vote, and then merged agains with the final House Bill for the ultimate vote that decides what exactly we’ll get in healthcare reform legislation that lnads on Obama’s desk.  We’re still at least 6-8 weeks away from that point.

OK, who is Schumer saying “MAH BOI!” to in the photo?

Also, it doesn’t seem fair that I, who doesn’t have another job currently, makes the majority of my income from reporting, although I don’t get paid very much.  But our household income is good, for California (just always dollar or thousand per annum above the level where we’d get state help for things).

But if my spouse were to take the same work as I, she wouldn’t count, because she has another job she gets income from.

What about someone who pulls a paycheck and has an endowment, or is independently wealthy?  They’re not allowed to be reporters, either?  Only schlubs who work for multi-mediacorporations as their money maker?

BTW, it should be noted that the public otpion got voted down today in the Senate Finance Committee, not the entire Senate.  So this isn’t even the final Senate Bill we’re talking about, it’s just one of two different bills being crafted in the Senate (the other coming from the HELP Committee) which will have to be merged into one final Senate Bill before a vote, and then merged agains with the final House Bill for the ultimate vote that decides what exactly we’ll get in healthcare reform legislation that lnads on Obama’s desk.  We’re still at least 6-8 weeks away from that point.

Ah, didn’t realize there were two committees at it. Thanks.

This proposed definition is another example of work that only counts as “real” if someone pays you for it. Compare also:
- cooking, cleaning, laundry etc. at home
- care of elderly or disabled friends / family members
- childcare

So in a way I am not surprised. Disappointed, though.

Couldn’t you simply encorporate your blog, then pay yourself a $1 salary from the corporate books?

Kos apparently got in touch with Schumer, who said that he was asked to put that in the bill by someone else on his committee. Smart money’s on Feinstein. He claims it’s procedural and that a fight for a broader definition of journalist is ahead.