Given the "breaking news" quality of Twitter feeds, it is not unreasonable to be able to extend the "press" tag to it.
So the first amendment would apply doubly so - "or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" No?
Generally "press" has been interpreted to just mean "writing", in part because it's hard to see the Constitution's authors considering "press" to refer only to a specific occupation like "journalist" or "publisher", when many of their own political publications during the Revolution, which seem like the sort of thing the First Amendment was intended to protect, were DIY pamphlets or single-sheet flyers.
I'm all for "badge incentives" of some sort, that would show you can expect higher quality of service from someone. Kind of like the "approved" names on Twitter. But that doesn't mean you should ban all the other names. And it also doesn't mean you should ban all the other "non-press".
If we had that since the beginning, we wouldn't have blogs now. We'd just have online divisions of the print media. Plus, I think we should focus our attention on "acts of journalism", like Jeff Jarvis put it, not "journalists".
If I see something, I can make an act of journalism, without having a journalist ID. I think it's for the best and a nice evolution of news gathering. It's just that it's also another form of decentralization and empowering of the individual, and Governments hate that. They like stuff to be centralized, so they can filter out what they don't like. It's clear all the traditional media is filtering stuff out that the Government wouldn't like these days.
"It's clear all the traditional media is filtering stuff out that the Government wouldn't like these days."
Yes, and that's why one solution is to consume media from countries which are intensely critical of the US. For example, I regularly watch Russia Today, online. Even though some of it is Russian propaganda, they usually have some information about, or a different perspective on, US-related events that I can't get in the US media.
"Freedom of the press" does not mean "freedom of news agencies". Remember, the Constitution was written back in the 1700s when "the press" was an abbreviation for "the printing press", the only mechanism of mass content distribution available at the time.
"Freedom of speech" means you can say what you want at a rally, assembly, or just walking down the street, and "freedom of press" means you can print (or "press", i.e., use the press to create and distribute) what you want.
