Who Counts as Press

The question that landed in California's courts by April 2006 was deceptively simple: do these people count as press?

A Santa Clara County superior court had already answered: no. The bloggers and online publishers couldn't invoke California's journalist shield law — the statute that lets reporters protect their sources from subpoena — because they weren't, in the court's view, journalists. They published on websites. They didn't work for newspapers. The shield was for the press, and the press, apparently, was something you needed a building for.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation appealed. The Sixth District Court of Appeal heard arguments on April 20, 2006.

The EFF's position was straightforward: California's shield law protects anyone "connected with or employed upon a newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication." AppleInsider and PowerPage were periodical publications. They published periodically. They had audiences. They distributed information the public found worth reading. The fact that they did this over the internet rather than through a printing press was a delivery method, not a credential.

Apple's position was also straightforward, and more revealing: these were not journalists, they were leakers. Or enablers of leakers. The company wanted its trade secrets back and its sources identified, and the shield law was standing in the way.

This is the dynamic that always reveals itself when corporations go to court over "who counts as press." The question is never really about journalism. It's about leverage. A narrow definition of press means fewer people can protect their sources, which means fewer sources will leak, which means fewer leaks see daylight. The legal argument is a business argument wearing a robe.

The pattern Apple fell into here is so predictable it should have a bug report filed against it: company controls narrative, company loses control of narrative, company attempts to use courts to recover control. Courts — sometimes — push back.

In this case, they did. The California Court of Appeal ruled that the shield law protected online journalists. The function of journalism — gathering information and publishing it for public benefit — mattered more than the format. You didn't need a press pass to be press. You needed to be doing the work.

It's a ruling that aged better in principle than in practice. The logic is sound: protect the function, not the credential. But the years since have given us a media ecosystem where "journalist" is claimed by everyone from investigators risking their lives in conflict zones to influencers posting sponsored content about supplements. The credential became meaningless; the function got buried under the noise.

Apple v. Does established that bloggers can claim press protections. It did not establish that all claims to press status are equally valid, or that shield protections would survive the economic collapse of the institutions that had historically held them. Those problems came later — delivered not by lawsuit, but by the same internet that had just won its day in court.

The Asteroid product, for what it's worth, was never released.

i · sources

• Apple v. Does — Wikipedia
• O'Grady v. Superior Court — Electronic Frontier Foundation