What is The Press?

A blogger questioned whether supreme court justices had the technical expertise to decide whether bloggers should have the same rights as Journalists. What rights are those? "Press" as used in the constitution doesn't have the meaning publishers. It is was short for printing press so freedom of the press is the right to print. It is a right of all people, not a special group. Compare freedom of speech. Professional speakers are called orators. Noone would claim that orators have rights that I don't have. Neither should professional printers have rights that I do not have. Together freedom of speech and of the press are freedom to communicate. One could ask whether a new form of communication (the internet) should be included.

Journalists try to expand their rights to the right to know (as agents of the public) and the right to conceal evidence of crimes justified as "protecting sources" in convulated service to this so-called right of the public to know.

I believe one or more states have passed a law to formalize this presumed right. These are not the same as constitutional rights.