The modified bill that passed the committee today included a provision that limits its protections to those who make “financial gain or livelihood” from their journalism. Bloggers who make ten bucks a quarter from their Google ads seem unlikely to get protection, though this will depend on how broadly the courts interpret “financial gain.”
Read this item from Ars Technica. Previously from WNM: Free Flow of Information Act positions bloggers as journalists
Disclosure is a tricky business and as a practice is still ill-defined even in the realm of traditional journalism. The general idea is that anything that might be seen as a potential conflict of interest between a writer and the subject of his story should be disclosed to the reader. If I invested in a startup I am writing about, for example, or if the CEO is my best friend, I should disclose that fact. But it’s not always so cut and dry.
Read this item from the Read/Write Web
