A lawsuit in Minnesota could provide some answers, reports the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Blois Olson, a Democratic P.R. exec, is suing a former GOP operative over an item on his blog, minnesotademocratsexposed.com. The post suggested that Olson criticized a congressional campaign because it refused to hire his firm. Olson says this is false, but blogger Michael Brodkorb is sticking to his story.
The paper quotes a Jane Kirtley, a lawyer and journalism professor at the University of Minnesota, who predicts that the lawsuit--if the courts get a chance to rule on it-- could help determine whether blogs will have to the stick to the same libel standards that newspapers and broadcasters face.
"The central question here is whether a court is going to treat a blog as being the equivalent of a news organization," Kirtley said. She said a few appellate cases across the United States suggest that courts so far have accepted looser standards for blogs, apparently because of blog readers know not to expect such sources to be completely factual.
But that's really no excuse, is it?
