Several items have been bouncing around the blogosphere pointing to lawyers discussing whether bloggers should enjoy the same legal protections as journalists. In 19 states and any federal court, those protections are non-existent, and in the 31 states that do have shield laws on the books, the laws are inconsistent at best.

It was a federal court judge who yesterday sentenced Rhode Island TV reporter Jim Taricani to six months of house arrest; he could have spent more time in jail, if the judge had opted to impose a harsher sentence. Taricani refused to divulge the name of a source, but there is no federal law that would keep a judge from issuing a subpoena. Even though the source ultimately revealed himself in an effort to spare Taricani, the judge sentenced the reporter anyway after he was found guilty of criminal contempt for defying an order to reveal his source.

According to a report from the Online Journalism Review back in June, reporters enjoy no protection in federal courts thanks to a 1972 Supreme Court ruling in in the case of Branzburg v. Hayes. In the case, the court ruled that “reporters have no right under the First Amendment to refuse to testify before grand juries. But the ruling said state legislatures and Congress could enact a statutory confidentiality rule to protect journalists if they wanted to.” A limited “newsgatherer’s privilege” has emerged since then, protecting a journalist’s sources unless the information sought is “relevant,” “compelling” and can’t be obtained by other means.

While none of the 31 states with shield laws on the books specifically reference the Internet as the channel for distributing the news, the channel could be interpreted as irrelevant. In Texas, Vanessa Leggett spent some five months in jail for refusing to disclose the name of a source who provided information for a true-crime book she was writing. The book hadn’t yet been published.

Congress has had plenty of opportunity to pass a shield law, but has balked every time. It might be a good idea for bona fide journalists to actually have decent protections under the First Amendment before we start lobbying for bloggers to enjoy some or all of those same protections.