Wednesday, July 03, 2013

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin Should be 'Politically Bitch Slapped' for Messing with the First Amendment

From James Taranto's 'Is this Column Legitimate?' (emphasis added):
Uh-oh, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, best known for likening American servicemen to Nazis, is looking to limit your First Amendment rights, if not ours. "Everyone, regardless of the mode of expression, has a constitutionally protected right to free speech," he writes. So far so good. "But when it comes to freedom of the press, I believe we must define a journalist and the constitutional and statutory protections those journalists should receive."...
As a thought experiment, can you see Thomas Paine (writer of 'Common Sense') petitioning King George for journalistic credentials in 1776?

Update:

  • Sen. Dick Durbin: It’s time to say who’s a real reporter
  • Law professor Glenn Reynolds: Who’s a journalist?: Don’t let Uncle Sam decide (emphasis added):
  • ...And Durbin is a constitutional ignoramus if he thinks that when the Framers talked about freedom of the press, they were talking about freedom for the press as an institution.

    Journalism is indeed an activity, not a profession, and though we often refer to institutionalized media as “the press,” we should remember that James Madison talked about freedom of the press as “freedom in the use of the press” — that is, the freedom to publish, not simply freedom for media organizations.

    In Madison’s day, of course, the distinction wasn’t as significant as it became later, when newspaper publishing became an industrial activity. It was easy to be a pamphleteer in Madison’s time, and there was real influence in being such...

    The ability to publish inexpensively, and to reach potentially millions of people in seconds, has made it possible for people who’d never be able to — or even want to — be hired by the institutional press to nonetheless publish and influence the world, much like 18th century pamphleteers...

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