– NJ Supreme Court Finds Source Shield Law Does Not Apply To Bloggers (ZeroHedge, June 7, 2011):
In another direct stab at the last remnant of truly independent (if often times quite incompetent) media, the New Jersey Supreme Court has just found that people posting opinions online don’t have the same protections for sources as mainstream journalists.
According to our secret sources at the AP, (also known as Copy and Paste), “The court ruled Tuesday that New Jersey’s shield law for journalists does not apply to online message boards. The case involved a New Jersey-based software company named Too Much Media. It sued a Washington state blogger for defamation and wanted her to reveal sources she cited on message board posts.”
It is sad that the legislative has decided to invoke a tiering in the media world, which will most certainly backfire and bring even more eyeballs to the blogosphere, where while the bulk of the information comes in the form of CTRL+V information exchange, it does serve a critical role of being a non-conflicted (corporate advertising) source of much needed information.
In the meantime, ever more blogs will find it necessary to offshore their operations (Iceland and Sweden are quite friendly in that regard) in order to avoid the encroaching US police state.