With Harvard’s Help, Congress May Keep Bloggers Out of Jail
  • November 19, 2009

With Harvard’s Help, Congress May Keep Bloggers Out of Jail

With Harvard’s Help, Congress May Keep Bloggers Out of Jail

It’s hard out here for a blogger.

And hard for online journalists, unemployed new media producers, and just about anyone else dabbling in journalism without professional backing.

Beyond the basic financial challenges, there is scant legal help for members of the new media, even though they face the same complex, pricey legal threats as traditional media. Plus extra threats — like government attempts to out anonymous bloggers, which can cost a lot to fight in court.

Ari Melber
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It’s hard out here for a blogger.

And hard for online journalists, unemployed new media producers, and just about anyone else dabbling in journalism without professional backing.

Beyond the basic financial challenges, there is scant legal help for members of the new media, even though they face the same complex, pricey legal threats as traditional media. Plus extra threats — like government attempts to out anonymous bloggers, which can cost a lot to fight in court.

On Thursday, however, it just got a little easier out here for a blogger. (h/t Jon Stewart.) The smart folks at Harvard’s Citizen Media Law Project are launching a program of free legal services for online and citizen media. And I’m taking the liberty of substituting the word "free" for pro bono in their announcement — us lawyers have trouble kicking the Latin:

 

We are [launching the] Online Media Legal Network (OMLN), a new [free] initiative that connects lawyers and law school clinics from across the country with online journalists and digital media creators who need legal help. Lawyers participating in OMLN will provide qualifying online publishers with [free] and reduced fee legal assistance on a broad range of legal issues, including business formation and governance, copyright licensing and fair use, employment and freelancer agreements, access to government information, pre-publication review of content, and representation in litigation.

 

New media experts immediately applauded the move. NYU professor Jay Rosen said he supports the program because it is "trying to level the playing field for independent online producers."

The program launches just as Congress is on the verge of strengthening reporting protections not only for traditional journalists, but for bloggers as well.

A new draft shield law, supported by President Obama, would scuttle government subpoenas against unpaid bloggers in instances when the forced disclosure of a source was outweighed by the public interest. The law would benefit professional journalists and amateur bloggers. Of course, it helps to have a lawyer around to enforce those rights.

—

With research by Shakthi Jothianandan.

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Ari Melber Ari Melber is The Nation’s Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine’s blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at [email protected]. Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent. He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,” “The Joy Behar Show,” “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004).  His reporting  has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review.  He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.  


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