> I wouldn't care if it were devastating only to the current press, it is beyond awful anyway

You're confusing the 24/7 TV infotainment with proper journalism. TV anchors peddling stories optimized to maximum viewership for the purpose of advertising is just one aspect to it, and it would be the least hurt by this. Real investigative journalism would be hit much harder.

I'm not confusing anything, I am saying "proper journalism" is not something that is done in the mainstream press now, at least not in the quantities worth talking about. It's an exception rather than the rule. Pretty much nothing in most of the press is optimized for it. So I don't see why anything we do should be optimized for the needs of the press. Privacy is important, but not because the press is special and they need it. It's because we, regular shmoes, need it. If it also helps the press, well, they are people too. But no more people than the rest of us.

If 'real journalism' wasn't long in its grave. Remember '60 minutes'? All rigged to make the reporters look like geniuses, and slanted to make every poor schlep look like a conspirator.

No one is saying anyone on the SCOTUS is stupid. In fact, the opposite is the real problem: they are professional legal scholars with a wide knowledge of legal precedent. Applying legal arguments to real life situations often leads to conclusions that people who aren’t judges or lawyers would consider absurd.

That has been the case for the last 250 years and somehow the republic survived that pretty well. Surely there were some absurd SCOTUS decisions, but there were also some absurd laws, absurd executive orders and absurd government actions on all levels. Nothing changed there, SCOTUS haven't become any different than it was and is as capable of handling complexities of life as it ever was. I don't think there's any need to specifically single out journalists as special protected class that have different rights form all other people and need special care from SCOUS who otherwise will be unable to figure out such thing as destroying privacy on the internet.