Florida is raising eyebrows with a bill that would require anyone blogging about the state’s elected officials to register or face fines.
According to NBC affiliate WFLA, Florida Senator Jason Brodeur has proposed a new bill that would force bloggers writing about the “the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, a Cabinet officer, or any member of the Legislature” to register with the state and file monthly reports if they receive compensation for what they write.
The bill goes on to say that the bill “does not include the website of a newspaper or other similar publication,” but reading the bill’s text leaves tremendous room for interpretation and does not definitively rule out any type of news coverage.
What’s more, the bill doesn’t even limit its scope to bloggers within the state of Florida:
“Blogger” means any person as defined in s. 1.01(3) that submits a blog post to a blog which is subsequently published.
“Blog post” is an individual webpage on a blog which contains an article, a story, or a series of stories.
The bill then outlines a schedule of monthly reports bloggers would be subject to:
If a blogger posts to a blog about an elected state officer and receives, or will receive, compensation for that post, the blogger must register with the appropriate office, as identified in paragraph (1)(f), within 5 days after the first post by the blogger which mentions an elected state officer.
Upon registering with the appropriate office, a blogger must file monthly reports on the 10th day following the end of each calendar month from the time a blog post is added to the blog, except that, if the 10th day following the end of a calendar month occurs on a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday, the report must be filed on the next day that is not a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday.
Failure to comply would lead to some hefty fines:
A fine of $25 per day per report for each day late, not to exceed $2,500 per report.
It seems that Senator Brodeur may need a primer on the First Amendment and how it applies to bloggers, as well as all news coverage in general. In the meantime, it’s highly unlikely such a law — if the bill even passes — would ever survive a legal challenge.