> #1 and #2 say that you need a piece of paper to be a journalist.

no, they say that if you have a piece of paper, you could be a journalist. if you have no paper, but meet other criteria, you could be a journalist.

> #3 through 5 says that you need to have "standards" to be a journalist

yup

> Again there is no one to bell the cat

judges bell cats. that's the whole point of the judicial system. i'm going to show you how a reasonable judge (hey, reasonable person) would apply this standard:

> If your rush expose has numerous misspellings, do you lose your status?

nope. that's nowhere in the standard.

> How closely must you check your facts?

depends on the facts. something controversial? probably pretty closely. something obvious? probably not all that close. the important thing is that this is something that you as an organization do. cox didn't do any at all. great, doesn't meet this standard.

> How much conflict of interest must you disclose? "Disclosure: the author loves Apple products."

that's not a conflict of interest.

> Similarly for keeping notes and being up front with your sources.

seriously? you're okay with people who don't keep notes and lie to their sources "journalists"? the issue is not whether you didn't keep notes that one time. cox never did. she's not a journalist.

> #7 says that unless you provide fair views or equal time

nope. it just says you have to contact the opposing party for their perspective. you don't have to devote half your article to them. you'll notice that fox news has democrats on for their pundits to yell at. of course, cox never contacted the plaintiff for his opinion.

> what is journalism? It's broadcasting an eyewitness account, or original ideas derived from an eyewitness account, to the public

no. that's tweeting. if you think people anybody who writes anything about the real world special protections not afforded to the rest of the population, you're insane. the issue at hand is whether or not certain people get special protections (particularly from subpoenas). look, if you tweet about a murder that you heard about from someone, the DA can subpoena you for your source and your testimony. if you tweet about it, that doesn't make you a journalist immune from divulging your sources.

> Freedom of the press means freedom to publish and be read without censorship.

yup. there's no first amendment issue here! cox made defamatory statements; those are not neither covered under shield laws nor the first amendment!

> doesn't mean that we need to somehow narrow the field of journalism to exclude the unwashed masses

publishing and journalism are not the same! we provide journalists with special protections because they provide us (the public) with something valuable (journalism). we pass laws giving them special treatment (we're not allowed to subpoena their sources), and as such, we should definitely expect certain standards from them. i don't think the bar for journalism should be super high, but that doesn't not make everyone a journalist.

> We might need to specify the definition of "journalistic activity" if we need to carve out special protections.

that's the whole point. shield laws apply only to journalists. that's the question at hand.