Is blogging fair use?

I was reading PoliticsVT the other day and I noticed this:

We would also like to note that we will no longer be displaying material from the Burlington Free Press. The editors there, despite our citation, links and references did not appreciate our re-printing of material. We eventually realized that this was a copyright infraction and the two groups came to a decision that it would be best not to print any material from the Free Press, in the future. Which is totally fine, and we understand their concern. We will provide links to articles from the Free Press, however, we will not post any material. This will be our strategy for all our news stories for the future. It will save room and also headaches.

What do you think about that?

I am not sure if it really is a copyright violation because of the fair use doctrine, but I doubt there are too many bloggers that would dare risk the legal mess that could result if a media giant like Gannett, owner of the Free Press, decided to pursue that avenue. I, for one, could not afford to fight it out in court, even if it is fair use.

I hate to sound like a liberal, but this is the problem with corporate controlled media. They can just bully people around, knowing that small non-profit blog owners do not have the resources to compete with their legal teams. Don’t get me wrong; I do not want the government to control the media, but there is a downside to corporate media.

It is good for our democracy to have blogs where the news can be debated freely. They add a value that most newspapers do not provide. The newspapers should be the ones to profit from their hard work in reporting, but they should not stand in the way of bloggers referencing their material for comment, criticism, discussion, and debate.