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KSL Newsradio's Chelsea Hedquist reportingBloggers are everywhere these days. One firm estimates as many as 53 million bloggers on the internet. Some people view blogging as the democratization of the media. If that's the case, should bloggers be prepared to play by the relies of media law?
Most people think of the bloggosphere as a freewheeling, no-holds-barred world where people can say whatever they want and get away with it. Not so, says attorney Jeff Hunt.
"Bloggers have to play by the same legal rules that the traditional media has to play by," he said.
That means bloggers are just as vulnerable to libel lawsuits as any member of the press.
"There's just no substitute for accuracy and bloggers need to understand that the way traditional media reporters understand that," said Hunt.
More than 50 lawsuits have been filed this year resulting from postings on blogs and message boards. Utah Blogger Sarah Nielson had a close call herself.
"I write about dating and at one point I had someone that had written me an email that I reposted on my blog. And he had threatened to sue," she said. "So I do worry about things like that a little bit."
In all reality, libel lawsuits against bloggers are still quite rare. Brigham Young University professor Kevin Stoker think that bloggers won't pay much attention to the threat of lawsuits until they be more common.
"Until we start seeing a lot of cases coming through the system - at least publicized cases coming through the system - I think you're going to see a lot of bloggers continuing to say what they will," he said.
Nielson reluctantly admits there may come a day when libel lawsuits infringe on the bloggosphere.
"I'm sure it will at some point, but until then keep blogging," she said.
And with as many as 1.6 million blog posts going up on a daily basis, that means we'll probably keep seeing some pretty interesting - and controversial - stuff online.
