A South Carolina District Court judge has ruled that bloggers may have the same rights as journalists, depending on the content of the blog. The complete case, BidZirk LLC v Phillip J Smith, is available at Justia. Justia rocks!
From Judge Henry M. Herlong, Jr.’s opinion:
However, in determining whether Smith was engaged in news reporting or news commentating, the court has applied the functional analysis suggested by commentators and the Plaintiffs in their memorandum in support of a preliminary injunction, which examines the content of the material, not the format, to determine whether it is journalism… In addition, the court has considered the intent of Smith in writing the article. The court agrees that not all bloggers are journalists. However, some bloggers are without question journalists.
Source: What I Learned Today…