First Amendment applies to bloggers, too!

Tal Kopan writes at Politico that

a federal appellate court ruled Friday that the author of a blog post deserves the same treatment in a defamation case as "institutional media."

"The protections of the First Amendment do not turn on whether the defendant was a trained journalist, formally affiliated with traditional news entities, engaged in conflict-of-interest disclosure, went beyond just assembling others’ writings, or tried to get both sides of a story. As the Supreme Court has accurately warned, a First Amendment distinction between the institutional press and other speakers is unworkable,"