My firm belief is that bloggers, assuming they remain within the reasonable limits of the law, should have the same First Amendment rights as mainstream journalists in the local and national press corps. This should also hold true in other countries, where perhaps the statutes have different names, but the need to facilitate open communication and dialogue still exists. The subject of bloggers and what legal rights are afforded them, comes up more and more in the mainstream discussion. Just last week, during the debate over the hack of Sarah Palin’s email, Bill O’Reilly of FOX News called for the arrest of the owners of WikiLeaks, for publishing the records of Palin’s email. As you can see below, even his own anchor, Megyn Kelly (known more for her short skirts than her reporting), disagrees with his imbecile notion that the WikiLeaks team should be “hauled away in cuffs.” Quite obviously, reporting news (assuming the reporter had no part in illegally obtaining the news), is protected under the First Amendment and O’Reilly embarrasses himself yet again by disagreeing with this fact (you can always tell when he’s on the losing side of an argument, because magically he’s out of time, when he should be responding and admitting he is wrong). Oh, and to boot, his site was hacked in retaliation for these comments. Apparently he thinks he’s smart or something… Does he not want protection from the law for all of the slanderous remarks he makes on his TV and radio shows?

John Timmer, of Ars Technica, has written a nice little piece discussing a couple of examples where bloggers have been prosecuted (or not) in various countries including Singapore, Malaysia and Morocco. The comments section to this article is also of interest, because the subject of scrutinizing a monarchy comes into play in Morocco. While Timmer discusses the court actions involved in these cases, there are a multitude of bloggers coming under greater scrutiny in other countries such as China and Russia where the bloggers never see the inside of a courtroom, or even the inside of a jail cell, as with this Russian blogger we reported on recently. The cops just shot him in the head while handcuffed in the back of the police car. Considering the growing trend of mainstream journalists blogging more, as well as bloggers being sourced where information which might not normally be available to the press, it would be wonderful if the mainstream media put more resources into reporting this subject of utmost importance to their future, as well as ours.

The next possible Idiot-in-Chief, Sarah Palin, has apparently been using her Yahoo! email account for official Alaska business. This was first revealed months ago, but only just resurfaced because she got caught! Hackers have infiltrated the account (big surprise), revealed some of its contents and now the Secret Service is asking the Associated Press for copies of the records (too convoluted to explain, just go here if you care that much).

Of course this explains how she became the Republican Vice Presidential Nominee! Everyone knows how much spam Yahoo’s filters don’t catch, well apparently Palin clicked on the email entitled, “Be McCain’s VP for a day” hoping it would give her a boost of sexual prowess. Palin was just looking for a hunting partner, but didn’t even blink when McCain asked her to be his soul-mate instead. This now makes sense why everyone was surprised when Palin was picked as McCain’s running mate, but the folks over at Yahoo! were too busy saying no to the merger with Microsoft to bother saying no to this sacrilegious partnership. Well, chalk up another win for Google: On the recommendation of Karl Rove, infamous for using unofficial email accounts for official business, Palin is now using Palinisafox@GMail.com.

Oh, by the way, here are a couple of screen shots of Palin’s actual Yahoo! email account thanks to Duncun.

UPDATE - Sunday evening - Apparently, because the 20-year old college student knew enough to be dangerous, but not enough not to get caught, his identity has been revealed and he has been arrested. You can read more on the technical details of this case here.

Why is it that so many news outlets seem to think it is OK to report on something, anything as long as they can attribute it to a source, any source. Let’s take, for example, the tragedy that has befallen Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones: She suffered from a brain hemorrhage and is now listed in critical condition in a hospital. However, everyone from the Associated Press, MSNBC, CNN, CBS and FOX News to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, New York Times, Capital Briefing and Bloomberg (among others) reported that the Congresswoman had died. Why? Well, some of them have admitted to using an “anonymous source” from Capital Hill.

However, I have a feeling some of it has to do with a bit of group think as well… Well, all the rest of them are reporting that she died and we have an “anonymous source,” so why not!?!? What happened to credibility? What happened to verifying with the fricken hospital or the Congresswoman’s office or family first?!? Have we seen this before? Perhaps in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq? NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX and everyone else was saying there were WMD’s, and there were anonymous sources to corroberate the information, so why bother checking with the people who actually know about these sorts of things?!?! What a bunch of MEDIA SLACKERS!!

UPDATE: According to multiple sources, including the hospital in Ohio and the Congresswoman’s family, Stephanie Tubbs Jones has died as of Wednesday. A very sad day for many, again made worse by unprofessional reporting by so many in the mainstream media.

From MediaMatters:

Bill O’Relly, who can’t even claim that he is a journalist (much less an American or human being), is in the habit of sending his lackies to do his dirty work; i.e. catching people off guard and then editing the crap out of the segments to create a message of propaganda unworthy of even Hamlet. Well, this time things didn’t go so well and the attendees at the 2008 National Conference of Media Reform (and the folks at Uptake) were ready for O’Reilly producer Porter Barry (Google his name for your amusement), when he accosted respected journalist Bill Moyers. Here is the exchange in its entirety. Enjoy and please comment at will. Viewers on YouTube are alive and kicking:

“Challenge the bully and the bully runs. Why won’t BO go on Moyers? He knows he will be humiliated and outclassed. Moyers is a journalist; BO has to cut the mic of his guests so he can yell them down. Will BO have the courage to mention this without editing the video? Don’t hold yer breath.”