Apple: bloggers aren't really the media

From ZD Net:

A California court in San Jose on Thursday is scheduled to hear a case brought by Apple Computer that eventually could answer an unsettled legal question: Should online journalists receive the same rights as traditional reporters?

Apple claims they should not. Its lawyers say in court documents that Web scribes are not "legitimate members of the press" when they reveal details about forthcoming products that the company would prefer to keep confidential.

Jayson Blair, Dan Rather, and Mary Mapes are but a few examples of so-called "legitimate members of the press", and they all were fired "resigned" in disgrace. By comparison, the blogosphere shed the light on the Texas Air National Guard forged documents story, which helped bury Rather's and Mapes' careers and Monsieur Jean-Francois Kerry's campaign.

I realize that Apple has to make the argument that bloggers don't count as "real press" folks for the purposes of First Amendment freedom of the press protection, since they're suing someone for leaking information on their products. However, every day, the alternative media is doing the job that the MSM ought to be doing.

(Sidebar: it's funny that the MSM can leak classified documents that compromise our national security, in violation of federal law, and claim "freedom of the press" in their defense...yet the MSM and their allies don't want to extend that same kind of "freedom" to the alternative media!)