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Comment by rudyfink | Hacker News Reader

I think that is correct with the caveat that the article assumes that Chen would be considered a journalist.

The article says that "Federal and California law both protect reporters against police searches aimed at uncovering confidential sources or seizing other information developed during newsgathering activities." The commentary discusses the author's opinion that Chen's equipment should not have been taken under sections of the Federal Privacy Protection Act and the California constitution designed to protect journalists. The article does not discuss whether Chen would be a journalist under those laws though it appears to tacitly assume that he would be.

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Do you have any sort of specific criteria for what is considered a journalist? It seems like the discussion here tends to equate journalists with reporters and then speculate to what extent Chen should be considered a reporter. The problem is that reporters are actually a proper subset of journalists.

I believe the Gawker CEO has said publicly something to the order of: Our employees are not journalists. Journalists have to do it right, we just have to do it first.

However I can't find a link to back it up so..

Here you go: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06...

That's interesting, but I don't think that's what positr0n was describing. The Washington Post reporter describes Gawker's work repeatedly as journalism. Even the photograph caption uses "Gawker Web site reporter" to mean blogger.

It does say that the CEO cares more about breaking the story first than verifying facts and sources--but I don't see where he goes so far as to state or imply that he doesn't consider Gawker to be journalism. And he is quoted as saying: "We may inadvertently do good. We may inadvertently commit journalism. That is not the institutional intention." I can see how that might mean what positr0n says but I can also see how that could have a nuanced meaning in the context of the WP article.

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