Shaw riles critics

David Shaw's Sunday media column in the Times struck me as one of his intellectually weakest efforts. His position that bloggers should not be covered by shield laws that protect reporters from disclosing confidential sources is defensible (though I disagree with it), but his arguments read like he did no research and wasn't aware that scores of journalists blog these days or that many bloggers report and break stories. His broad-brush swipe, that no bloggers should be treated as journalists because some make stuff up, opened him up to easy ridicule about Jayson Blair et al. If you are into the subject, Shaw is being ripped for his seeming lack of history about press protections and the First Amendment by Jack Shafer of Slate (who doesn't blog) and Jay Rosen of New York University and Matt Welch of Reason (who do). Former Herald Examiner editorial writer Joel Bellman emails: "Shaw's piece was a column that should live in infamy...Fortunately for us, James Madison and the other Constitutional framers demonstrated far more wisdom and insight in their drafting of the First Amendment than anointed arbiters of media taste like Shaw can muster more than 200 years later."