Rambling Rhodes

First Amendment For The Few

Via Shot in the Dark, I came across this little bit of blog bashing spouted forth by one David Paul Kuhn, CBSnews.com's chief political writer. You may remember that CBS not too long ago had a bunch of ankle-biting bloggers come after them for a certain forged memo story. So, they're kinda bitter. The opening paragraph pissed me off immediately:

Internet blogs are providing a new and unregulated medium for politically motivated attacks. With the same First Amendment protections as newspapers, blogs are increasingly gaining influence.

I love that one line about newspapers having First Amendment protections. It's true, of course, freedom of the press and all that. But, it seems to forget that the First Amendment also mentions something about freedom of speech, if I recall correctly, and that freedom is extended to ALL Americans.

It's a funny thing about big media outlets: at some point, they become so inflated by their own perceived self-importance, they begin to believe that the First Amendment somehow belongs to them and only them. They start to believe that the freedom of the press aspect of the First Amendment is somehow more important than freedom of speech. What institutions like CBS fail to grasp is that blogs are more an expression of free speech than they are of freedom of the press, and their failure to understand that will continue to cause them no end of frustration.

But it sure is fun to watch.