Can you please elaborate, with brief references, on what you see to be the difference between freedom of the press vs. freedom of speech, in the Canadian context. Or do you just mean the difference between verbalizing something and writing it down?

I haven't deeply delved into this, but it seems to me to be an excellent decision. If there's privilege associated with journalism, it should be because it covers an activity and not a profession (or "profession" even). And there's a lovely double-edged sword aspect to this too...

That is what I need to think about: "the difference between freedom of the press vs. freedom of speech, in the Canadian context."

It strikes me that they have to be different things. That the two freedoms protect different things in society. It seems to me that non-journalist freedom to express must be broader as it is non-professional, more serious. Example: we have laxer lay personal protection in all negligence in that a reasonable person would not expect the average person to be as good at helping them not bleed after an accident compared to the standards we impose on doctors. That is what a profession means - held to higher standards and receive higher privileges to allow those higher standards to be applied to greater benefit.

I don't think your point is wrong so much as I just don't think the activity of being a blogger is the same as being a journalist anymore than applying a bandage makes you a doctor.

I am presently undertaking research that will allow me to post a responsibly formulated opinion on this post. Please stay tuned.

It is an interesting question. Freedom of the press is really a derivative right from freedom of expression.

I think what the SCC was doing was recognizing that the nature of communication in general is and will be changing and the hard and fast notion of "journalism" as something practiced by people who purported to be professionals is growing obsolete. So, in rebalancing libel law with respect to freedom of expression (something which was long overdue), rather than restricting the rebalancing to a self created class of "journalists" the SCC to a purposive approach and looked at the intent of the communication. If it is about a matter of public interest then everyone has the same right to be wrong providing they follow the same basic check list.

I can tell you that even before this ruling, writing my own blog, I have been emailing and phoning the other side in matters of controversy. Now it will become standard practice whenever I throw in a potentially defamatory fact.

"Freedom of the press is really a derivative right from freedom of expression."

In a way but it is not that simple - which makes you a well mannered blogger.

The problem is "journalism" is not writin' and talkin' and stuff. It is opposition and being outside the political construct. You may wish it were so but, again, you are the "doctor" who gained your MD through putting on a band aide. "Self created class' in this context being a political statement that only a libertarian or a political hack could utter.

My concern that a greater freedom, that of citizen, has been reduced by aligning it with the professional. Who needs the state including the courts look to any purpose of non-professional communication? Since when did my utterings become "public interest"? They are mine.

Comparing journalists to doctors or (ahem) lawyers is unwarranted. The core of the journalist skill is reporting: being able to talk to people, learn facts and faithfully record it so we can understand the world better. Nothing beyond decent high-school marks and apprenticeship is required for this; there is no comparison to what is needed to become a doctor or a (ahem) lawyer.

Journalists - especially in the post-Watergate "Activist/Journalist/Take Down The Republican" period - have built up a pretty high opinion of themselves, but nothing indicates that they are better at faithfully recording facts and explaining them than any decent blogger.

I think you misunderstand how much it takes to be a lawyer and perhaps even a GP doctor - it has little to do with intelligence. As with journalists, it takes focus and years of attention to the chosen subject matter. As with all professionals, it does not make you perfect but with journalists unlike doctors or lawyers, you are exposed to the poorer ones. Doctors and lawyers build walls to keep that information from you but a review of any monthly listing of professional misconduct will assure you that the profession does not require a separate class of person.

I am a great believer in the basic ideas of Ivan Illich so appreciate the limits of all professions. Journalists are no different. If a decent blogger can match that, well, I have not encountered a decent blogger.

But that is not my point. I am worried about the implications for citizen public speech that is non-professional.

I wasn't thinking of intelligence. More along the lines of having to have access to a depth of information based on the experience of other practitioners: Fred saw this and concluded that, but was wrong; Sue did this and then this happened x hundreds or thousands of examples.

Maybe there's a correspondence to this in Journalism (what to do if you phone the wrong number? what place is likely to have the best free food?) but the reporters whose work I most enjoy/respect seem to bring the critical aspects of their work from outside their profession - knowledge of history, or science, or mathematics and statistics, or unusual insight, etc.

One other difference - and I think one that also earns your respect - is that journalists operate in a system with editors and other professionals who act to provide greater accuracy and promote peer to peer responsibility in a way that solo writing just doesn't include.

Professional entities and oversight bodies also act act to maintain standard in relation to any number of activities which we rely upon - accountants, lawyers, doctors as well as teachers, nurses and journalists - because we rely upon them.

Who relies on the blogger? Why would we equate informal expression of the blogger with the serious, professional democratic necessity of journalism? Which bloggers actually consider themselves akin to journalists who were not also journalists or legitimately connected to a political or business interest?

Touché on your point re: editors in §1. In the blogging world, we do have reputation though - we visit bloggers we like and ignore those we don't. This happens too in the real world, note Newsweek's parabolic arc toward the garbage, or the fate of Gourmet magazine.

Yes, some of the best bloggers are journalists, but this I think reinforces the point that journalism is something one does rather than a professional designation. In the last 6 months, say for the recent airplane stupidities or climategate information, I've gone to blogs (left & right) before I've gone to professional legacy media. Even where the MSM has been embarrassing itself recently, with over-coverage of Tiger Woods or Balloon Boy, the best news has been found "elsewhere".

I'm curious that you think this court decision is lessening your freedom, given the number of SLAPP-type lawsuits flying around the Canadian blogosphere recently.

Why would you think I don't wonder why there aren't more lawsuits given the quality of comment that appears on blogs? It is because they are unimportant, that no one notices. There may be a few stories that something pop up on in blogs but it really is the million monkey situation where sooner or later something valid will rise to the surface.

And the idea that anything other than discussion has been established through blogs on the climate question just doesn't make sense. ten million typists writing "feh" does not make for science let alone a thought. Besides, it was the KGB that disclosed the emails - and I know that because a blog told me so.

Most including you and me self-select sources of information based on prejudices and past satisfaction that the sources align with what we already believe. I believe in the NYT and the BBC and you believe in blogs. But belief is no way to determine actual truths. We are just putting on the comfortable sweaters of choice.

I care principally about freedom of expression. What journalists may do or not do as members of a self-declared profession is not really all that important to me, though I remain an enthusiastic consumer of their work.

But re the larger battle of blogs vs. the press, I defer to the views of new media/Hollywood conservative guru Andrew Breitbart (wounder of ACORN), who says that he does not want to slay the dragon, but merely "to embarrass [it] into being a more reasonable dragon".

No delusions of grandeur here. Fact-checking yes, wholesale replacement, no.