Who qualifies as a journalist? The failures of the new DOJ guidelines.

Free Press reports on the new DOJ guidelines:

Last Friday, the Justice Department released revised guidelines governing the Department’s interactions with the press. President Obama had ordered Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct the review in response to the news earlier this year that the DoJ had obtained the phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors and the emails of a Fox News reporter.
One of the main issues is whether citizen journalists (e.g., many serious writers/reporters/investigators who run their own websites to report the new) will have any protection at all. This article warns that the federal government is moving in the direction of declaring an "official press," deeming who is a journalist and who is not. This, in the digital age where citizen journalists are making a tremendous impact on news gathering.

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Surveillance State dries up investigative reporting

From WND:

The president of Associated Press is warning that reporters’ sources already are drying up because of the threat posed by the Obama administration’s grab of news agency telephone records. In a report by the news wire, AP President Gary Pruitt said the Justice Department’s seizure of the records was unconstitutional, and ultimately Americans may be uninformed or misinformed about their government as a result.

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Read more about the article The critical importance of complete freedom of the press (in additional to free speech)

The critical importance of complete freedom of the press (in additional to free speech)

The Death and Life of American Journalism (2010), by Robert McChesney and John Nichols, is an extraordinary book detailing A) the historical and jurisprudential foundation for freedom of the press (specifically granted in the First Amendment, separate and distinct from free speech), and B) the need to declare journalism as…

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