Written by David Tebbutt in March 2005

Many blog authors are equivalent to, or even better than, professional journalists. Indeed, some of them have been prominent journalists. Some of the web-published media are as good as professional publications. And they get into 'print' quicker. Just as radio, then television, expanded the existing media, so the internet and the 'blogosphere' are expanding the current media mix. I believe that Factiva even uses some blogs as a source of news. For all sorts of reasons, some bloggers and online publications are indistinguishable from mainstream media, apart from the communication channel they happen to use.

You can imagine the heat and steam that was generated in early March by a judge's 'tentative ruling' to treat bloggers differently to conventional journalists. Judge James Kleinberg refused to afford Shield Law and First Amendment protection to some bloggers and their online publications. Shield Law protects journalists from being in contempt of court if they withhold the identity of information sources. The First Amendment relates to free speech.

Apple was the company trying to extract some names from the bloggers' email accounts. The bloggers, Apple devotees to a man, tried to stop this happening. Their sin had been to publish some company confidential information. Apple had failed to identify the employees who'd spilled the beans. This led to the court ruling that the bloggers' sources be revealed.

No doubt the bloggers had given assurances to the informants that they would never reveal their names. They must have thought they were protected by the shield law. In their naivety, they also mistook 'what the public is interested in' for 'the public interest'. This quickly became a side issue.

The 'tentative ruling' appeared to hinge on whether the bloggers were really journalists. This caused a massive rumpus in the press and in the blogosphere. It comes to something when the mainstream media, which has no reason to like bloggers, sprung to their defence. Apple was widely reviled for its strongarm tactics and an enormous amount of goodwill appeared to be slipping from its grasp. News travels fast in the blogging world and when credible people are doing the posting, it can cover the globe in seconds.

The judge must have realised what a can of worms had been opened. (I won't say he opened it, because his comments were fairly cautious.) But, if he'd even toyed with the idea of defining journalism, he must have realised he would be on a loser. The case would run and run. So he took a different tack. In his final ruling, he declared that information gained illegally could not afford protection to anyone. Thus the sources would have to be revealed.

The focus of attention now moves back to what is 'illegal'. Laws exist to protect trade secrets. Therefore the repetition of a trade secret is against the law.

Now attention moves to what constitutes a trade secret. Sadly, the answer appears to be 'anything'. Apple could declare that everything you see and hear while working with Apple (as an employee or a third party) is confidential. This would turn Apple into a black hole from which nothing could emerge without the company say-so.

Apple has achieved its probable objective of frightening bloggers. I predict it will now invite the most influential ones to 'insider' briefings. To maintain this status, they will be expected to report 'fairly'.

This ruling is not supposed to be interpreted more broadly, but it is easy to imagine powerful organisations rubbing their hands at the prospect of a compliant new media. Sadly, this would somewhat restrict the quality of your own organisation's information diet.