It’s almost like they’re trying to silence dissent.

Via Detroit News:

A number of years ago, my wife found herself in a fender-bender. Nobody was hurt, thank goodness, but the accident was serious enough to require the filing of a police report. Over the next day or two, our phone rang nonstop: Personal-injury lawyers had grabbed hold of the information and pounced.

Brrring! Hello. Wanna sue? No. Click.

It was an obnoxious and annoying ordeal.

So I understand why Michigan legislators are trying to prevent the ambulance chasers from enjoying easy access to similar data. These are the lawyers who give the rest a bad name: I picture them as vultures, circling document centers, swooping down and carrying away information in their grasping talons.

But Lansing is going about it the wrong way.

Last week, a bipartisan majority on the House Judiciary Committee approved House Bill 4770, which seeks to define the word “journalist.” The goal is to distinguish between those who should see accident records immediately (vehicle owners, prosecutors, journalists, etc.) and those who shouldn’t (the vulture-lawyers).

Journalists, of course, ought to have access to public documents. The proposed legislation, sponsored by Ellen Cogen Lipton, D-Huntington Woods, recognizes this. Unfortunately, it also comes dangerously close to the licensing of reporters. […]

The bill says that journalists are employees of a radio or television station or a newspaper, which, it adds, is “published at least once a week, includes stories of general interest to the public, is used primarily for the dissemination of news, and may be published in hard copy form or on the Internet.”

HT: Jim Geraghty