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Hang on a minute judge!

A judge has ordered blogger Cameron Slater to reveal his sources in respect to the material he published about the Len Brown scandal.

According to judge Charles Blackie, Slater's Whale Oil blog does not qualify as a "news medium" and thus Slater himself does not qualify for the same levels of protection as a bona-fide journalist.

It has been alleged that a blog has "none of the checks and balances" of a news organisation.

Really?

Are you kidding me?

Have these people read any of our daily newspapers or watched the nightly news bulletins on TV recently?

As I have repeatedly observed and commented -- our "news media" should be ashamed of itself when it comes to checking its facts and verifying the veracity of the material it publishes.

Time and time again we see newspapers publishing press releases to which a "journalist's" byline has been added in order to make it "news".

At least most blogs add some analysis or commentary to the news they publish instead of printing PR-spin verbatim, as it arrives in their in-box from ex-journalists who have defected to the corporate sector.

As "news" organisations have continued to trim their costs (ie: their staffing levels) and outsourced such things as editing and proofing, standards within that industry have fallen significantly.

What's more, although most blogs originally relied on gleaning stories from the mainstream media as the source of their content it is increasingly the other way around, with popular blogs being constantly monitored by news publishers looking for a cheap source of leads.

If the factor that determines whether a writer/publisher has a right to protect their sources is simply whether they publish "news" or not then many, many blogs deserve that protection.

To presume, in the second decade of the 21st century, that "news" is the sole domain of large companies with big offices, printing presses and a large online media team is pretentious in the extreme.

I don't read Slater's blog and it's not the type of content that attracts me but if he broke a story that other publishers later latched onto and made "mainstream news" then he is clearly a news publisher and deserves to have his sources protected.

To give the entrenched "old media" a monopoly on this protection smells way-bad!

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