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Bloggers Seek Training To Avoid Legal Pitfalls

Posted on: Sunday, 15 June 2008, 18:13 CDT

When Miami real estate agent Lucas Lechuga began blogging to share his local market knowledge, he never expected a $25 million defamation lawsuit for simply writing that a local developer had gone bankrupt decades ago.

Others, such as Lake Geneva, WI commodities trader Gary Millitte, registered the Internet domain name LakeGenevaNews.com eight years ago, but is so concerned about the legal boundaries of blogging that he still hasn’t launched his ultra-local news Web site.

A growing number of non-journalists are entering the world of blogging, providing Web sites with information traditional media don’t or can’t. Many are now looking to professional journalists for training on matters such as determining when something is libelous, differentiating between news and opinion and locating public documents.

A recent introductory journalism course offered by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) in Chicago drew about a dozen would-be reporters. The group is also planning similar seminars in Los Angeles and Greensboro, N.C. this month.

"It would definitely have been something that would be worthwhile and I'd (have) been able to prevent this," Lechuga, who didn't attend the training, told the Associated Press.

Lechuga moved into online publishing with a finance degree, and said the pending claims against him were based on semantics. He would have chosen his words differently if he had a second chance, he said.

Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., praised the effort to offer training to citizen journalists.

"I think that what we're moving toward is some king of positioning between amateur and professional," Clark told the AP.

Amateur journalists have a long history of contributions to professional news reporting, such as the film of John F. Kennedy's assassination, images of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Asian tsunami in 2004, and photos from last year’s Virginia Tech massacre.

But many are now getting into trouble as they begin distributing their own content,  according to SPJ national president Clint Brewer.

Geoff Dougherty, a presenter at the SPJ’s program and editor of the Web site ChiTownDailyNews.org, hopes to prevent that by offering reporters online training.  He's creating a team of 77 to report on small city meetings that major news organizations don’t cover. He’s received $340,000  funding for the venture from Knight News Challenge.

"I see us in five years as the go-to source for Chicago news,"  Dougherty told the Associated Press.

"It's a big goal."

More than 100 judgments valued at $17 million have been handed down against bloggers over the last three years, according to Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association. Cox said about 60 percent were for defamation, 25 percent for copyright infringement and 10 percent involved privacy.

"It's the tip of the iceberg," Cox told the Associated Press

"Bloggers are being asked to write checks. The threats against bloggers are very real. The costs are very real."

Others are also beginning to offer assistance to citizen journalists. NowPublic.com, which collects news tips from the public and distributes them to news organizations, offers resources for contributors to help them learn to monitor themselves, said co-founder Michael Tippett.

"A lot of our members are aspiring journalists," Tippett told the Associated Press.

"They'll get half of it right. We'll push them to getting all of it right."

MJ Tam, who has blogged about motherhood for the past eight years, attended the Chicago training course.   She worries about how far she could go in rating baby products, she told the AP.

"I just want to make sure I'm doing the right thing," she said.

"How far can I take criticism? What's considered libel? I need those basics."

Source: redOrbit staff and wire reports

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