This morning, the Federal Election Commission unanimously approved Advisory Opinion 2005-16, agreeing that the Fired Up! sites were entitled to the same press exception from campaign finance laws as are the New York Times, National Review and Sean Hannity.
The AO states in relevant part:Fired Up qualifies as a press entity. Its websites are both available to the general public and are the online equivalent of a newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication as described in the Act and Commission regulations.—-
The Commission concludes that the costs Fired Up incurs in covering or carrying news stories, commentary, or editorials on its websites are encompassed by the press exception, and therefore do not constitute “expenditures” or “contributions” under the Act and Commission regulations.
This is a major victory for Internet free speech advocates.
One thought on “FEC: Blogs Are Just As Much “Press” As Everyone Else”
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Yea! A victory for common sense!
I tend to be able to understand both positions of a disagreement, but I can’t imagine what the alternative position would be.
Consider Fired UP added to my list of places to Lurk.
Via Fired Up, I followed this link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-curveball20nov20,0,2053900,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines
The “No smoking gun” header is where I first became aware. By luck or fate, I happened to be off work and happened to tune into Colin Powell’s UN speach. The thing that went through my mind over and over, was “Wow, this evidence is flimsy. If this was what they had for a US compound they couldn’t get a search warrant. Recordings of unidentified voices talking about something in code, sketches of vehicles, when between U2 or Satalite we could have had photos. I PRAY that they have more substatial evidence that they can’t release because it’s classified.”