Florida journalists' group slouches toward Gomorrah AND irrelevance

Emily Bloch and other members of the Florida Pro chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists have hatched a true Bizarro World idea: Trademark the words "fake news" so that Trump can't use them.

First, that's not how trademarks work in general. I can say "Coca Cola" any time I want, as long as it's not monetized commercial speech that infringes on a trademark.

Second, political speech (including non-verbal speech) is recognized as having extra rights in things like this. Since Trump IS president, that would give him more protection yet.

Third, contra her claim that it's "uncertain" that the Patent and Trademark Office will grant this, I can say it's almost CERTAIN it will NOT. Google four words: "Taco Tuesday" and "LeBron James."

Fourth, this clearly violates at least the spirit of the First Amendment. Beyond it being hare-brained, it's unethical and unprofessional. It's a sad state of affairs that she roped an entire chapter of the SPJ into this stupidity.

Ms. Bloch, per her bio, has contributed to Teen Vogue, among other things. This sounds about that level of thought. I mean, the story is posted on Teen Vogue. That's something that calls itself a "magazine," isn't it?

Worse yet, at a time when ever more Americans are willing to fold, spindle and mutilate the First Amendment, and especially among youth, giving them this mental swill as intellectual feeding is more unethical yet IMO.

I Tweeted — two delayed via TweetDeck — on three themes:
1. The general nutteryness
2. The LeBron/Taco Tuesday angle
3. The not understanding trademark law.

Florida SPJ responded ... with Bloch liking the Tweet, which doubled down on what's essentially a clickbait angle.

Thanks for weighing in! As we’ve explained multiple times, across multiple platforms: We wanted to start a conversation and share resources about how to be critical about what is and isn’t news. We’re glad to have done so. Learn more at https://t.co/tEtOlGIzPs

— SPJ Florida (@SPJFla) October 24, 2019

To which I fired back:

As many journos have weighed in on #FakeNews 4 mths/years, you cld have done much better IMO. Re yr website, I start w/ MediaBias FactCheck to examine websites with which I'm unfamiliar, then go from there. W/in media, I don't always trust Politifact et al https://t.co/zGb92JBlC8

— reallyDonaldTrump 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 24, 2019

Beyond clickbait, the one other thing I think of is related to that — it's a membership recruitment tool. I'm sure that at anything below larger-level dailies, individual memberships in groups such as SPJ has continued to drop along with flatlined or dropping salaries.