A federal court rules last week that bloggers have the same First Amendment right in defamation cases as traditional journalists.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco issued the ruling on Friday in regards to the blogger Crystal Cox, who was found guilty of defamation in 2011 for writing that the investment firm Obsidian Finance Group and a trustee committed fraud, reported Reuters.
The ruling comes as a big win to bloggers everywhere because according to the court
The protections of the First Amendment do not turn on whether the defendant was a trained journalist, formally affiliated with traditional news entities, engaged in conflict-of-interest disclosure, went beyond just assembling others’ writings, or tried to get both sides of a story. As the Supreme Court has accurately warned, a First Amendment distinction between the institutional press and other speakers is unworkable: “With the advent of the Internet and the decline of print and broadcast media … the line between the media and others who wish to comment on political and social issues becomes far more blurred.” Citizens United, 558 U.S. at 352.
The court also asserted that any allegations of crime are of public concern and that a blogger cannot be found guilty of libel unless they acted negligently.
This ruling comes nearly three years in the making after attorney Eugene Volokh and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a motion for a new trial for Cox, which was struck down when District Court Judge Marco Hernandez declared that Cox could not be considered part of the media and therefore not eligible for protection under Oregon’s shield law.
Cox has now been granted a new trial as part of the ruling.
Volokh has called this “a matter of history and precedent” but points out that “that the court’s reasoning is limited to First Amendment protections; it doesn’t discuss state or federal statutes that provide extra protection to the ‘media’ or to other subsets of speakers.” Cox was not recognized or labeled as a reporter or a journalist in this case.
The favorable ruling has the potential to clarify the First Amendment issues surround Roger Shuler, the Alabama blogger jailed for defamation after he accused the son of a former governor of an affair.