Bloggers to Receive Same Protections as Journalists

This is as it should be:

Publishing information online has always been a staple of free speech and providing critical, and often controversial, information to the masses. Of course once blogs hit the Internet in a storm of popularity, there became a fine line between what a real journalist is compared to an Internet "blogger" -- the later being deemed to be not a journalist by definition.

A new bill being pushed by U.S. Congressmen Rick Boucher and Mike Pence along with other House representatives aims to change a few rules and give the same protection to bloggers that journalists receive. As the law exists today, bloggers are open to attack by large corporate entities that have vast resources to exercise legal power.

In Boucher's break down of the actual bill, he clearly indicates blogs as entities that should be protected under the First Amendment. The Free Flow of Information Act will still need to jump through several hoops before it is passed. Analysts expect that several companies will oppose the bill due to the very fact that they are constantly in the eyes of the media. Despite this, Boucher and several others believe that the new bill has a strong chance to be accepted by Congress.

"It protects the public's right to know. Its passage should be a priority in this Congress," said Boucher.

This sounds like good news to me.  If I remember my Constitution correctly, we are supposed to have freedom of the press, not feedom of the professionally institutionalized journalists.