Liability insurance for independent media

By Michael Fraase

Saturday, 20 September 2008 10:39AM CST

Section: Media

Tipping lawOne of the last bastions separating corporate and independent media has been liability insurance. Corporatists had it; independents didn’t. Now that final wall has come down.

The Media Bloggers Association on Friday announced the launch of a comprehensive program to provide independents with access to the legal resources long enjoyed by corporate media outlets.

BlogInsure, part of the program, provides liability insurance—covering defamation, invasion of privacy, and copyright infringement (but apparently not errors and omissions)—for webloggers. The insurance is provided by Media/Professional Insurance, the world’s largest underwriter of media insurance and a unit of the Select Markets Division of AXIS Insurance.

Jay Rosen tweets that the cost for this liability insurance is about US$600 per year.

Insured members will have access to a legal hotline to help resolve issues before they grow into major problems. The hotline was created and is operated by Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, one of the top media law firms in the US.

Additionally, the trade organization developed an online course in media law in collaboration with the Poynter Institute.

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