Do Bloggers deserve the rights of Journalists?

There’s an inter­est­ing piece in today’s New York Times — an opin­ion
piece — that dis­cusses the Blogger’s right/privilege to main­tain the
pri­vacy of their sources. In the US it’s called the First Amend­ment
right. In Canada:

Free­dom of the Press is enshrined in Sec­tion 2 of the
Cana­dian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982), part of the Cana­dian
Con­sti­tu­tion, which states that every­one has the right to free­dom of
thought, belief, opin­ion and expres­sion, includ­ing free­dom of the press
and other media of com­mu­nic­a­tion
http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/charter/index.html.

But, since Blog­ging has such a low Ëœbar­rier to entry’ — Blog­gers
don’t have to attend Journ­al­ism school, cut their teeth in the boon­ies
work­ing on weekly papers, work week­ends and grave­yards cov­er­ing the
news­room, learn­ing the craft, under­stand­ing why a story leads (or
doesn’t) — a blog­ger may have little exper­i­ence with (or care about)
the other side of the coin, the Journalist’s respons­ib­il­ity to
objectiv­ity and truth.

Journ­al­ists know that there are many sides to a story, and object­ive
journ­al­ists attempt to present all sides fairly, without col­our or
pre­ju­dice. Journ­al­ists report on the facts. Can we say the same about
blog­gers? What about Blogs hos­ted by a biased PR or Mar­ket­ing com­pany -
do they get the Journalist’s Priv­ilege the same as a News Blog­ger?
Inter­est­ing ques­tions that time will answer.

[Sources: Micro Per­sua­sion Blog | Cana­dian Con­nec­tions: Canada and Press Free­dom | New York Times (sub­scrip­tion required) ]

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