Who is a journalist? Who is a blogger? We have the answer...
The Apple trade secrets case has hit squarely on one of the most vexing questions that our society currently ponders: who is a journalist? It is an answer that established media might prefer to print on page 92, if they had the pages.
The French Revolution defined the press as the fourth estate, as important as the monarchy, church and government. That’s quite a responsibility, yet this is a private sector that has no legal requirement to act as society’s guardian.
However, most journalists, and most readers, believe that there is an underlying responsibility of a high order, which shapes their work. There is a sense of contributing to a common good.
Defining who is a journalist is easy; here is my definition:
Anyone that can publish some text, and have someone else read it. There is no Hippocratic oath for journalists, no training required for a license, no regulations at all. Nothing special about journalists; anyone can be one. If you can string a sentence together, that's fine. In fact, if you can write an email, you can be a "blogger."
Definition of a blogger: a type of journalist that is called a blogger.
But will just anyone be considered by others a journalist?
Being a journalist in today’s society is usually understood as reporting news and related stories for sizeable populations of readers. And making a living from the profession--if you can make a living from doing it you must be doing it right. Right…?
US citizens are all journalists because they all have free speech rights. But did the founding fathers think of free speech as protecting the right to stand on a soapbox in the town square, or reaching millions over the internet? Did they factor in the digital media formats and the comms? I doubt it.
Will this result in hostile elements to the media forcing free speech rights to be restricted to a zone that is defined by the range of a loud speech, unamplified? Nope. It would be fun to see, though.
cd1155
