Do bloggers deserve basic journalistic protections?

Many bloggers -- not all, perhaps not even most -- don't seem to worry much about being accurate. Or fair. They just want to get their opinions -- and their "scoops" -- out there as fast as they pop into their brains. One of the great advantages of the Internet, many Web lovers have told me, is that it's easy to correct an error there. You can do it instantly, as soon as the error is called to your attention, instead of having to wait until the next day's paper.

But the knowledge that you can correct errors quickly, combined with the absence of editors or filters, encourages laziness, carelessness and inaccuracy, and I don't think the reporter's privilege to maintain confidential sources should be granted to such practitioners of what is at best pseudo-journalism.

I'm not saying that all bloggers are lazy, careless or inaccurate. I'm sure many take as much pride in their work -- their professionalism -- as I do.

Certainly, some bloggers practice what anyone would consider "journalism" in its roughest form -- they provide news. And just as surely, bloggers deserve credit for, among other things, being the first to discredit Dan Rather's use of documents of dubious origin and legitimacy to accuse President Bush of having received special treatment in the National Guard.

BUT bloggers also took the lead in circulating speculation that what appeared to be a bulge beneath Bush's jacket during his first debate with Sen. John Kerry might have been some kind of transmission device to enable his advisors to feed him answers.

No credible evidence has emerged to support that charge.

Equally irresponsible, it was yet another blogger -- if he can be so characterized -- Matt Drudge, who first posted the erroneous story last year alleging that Kerry had had an affair with a young intern.

Drudge may be more a tipster and a gossip than a true blogger, but I see him as part of the same solipsistic, self-aggrandizing journalist-wannabe genre, and I don't think the reporter's shield law should be available to anyone so quick to disseminate inaccurate information, with no editors to examine or restrain him.

I feel particularly strongly about this now, at a time when the Bush administration is hounding reporters in several cases to divulge their confidential sources or face prison for contempt.