A Journalist: Defined as what?

Submitted for your perusal:

The first amendment to the constitution of the United States offers "freedom of the press" as one of its guarantees to all citizens. Specificially, government shall make no laws abridging the freedom of the press.

So who or what is the press?

In the time of the founders, the press constituted newspapers, books, periodicals and the printers of leaflets that were handed out and tacked onto walls in public places. Journalists were those who either owned a press or worked for someone who owned a press.

The Founders knew not of radio or TV. Those inventions would come later. When they did it was held that the press included those "journalists" who used those outlets to report news and express opinions. However, there were initially limitations placed on electronic journalists because some in government rushed to "control" the new media by regulating the electronic frequencies allocated to radio and TV stations. Thus we had the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" and various other laws and regulations by which Congress most certainly did try to abridge the freedom of the new press, all in the name of fairness.

These attempts gave us the monopoly we grew up, the Big 3 networks of ABC, CBS and NBC, the taxpayer-funded public broadcasting outlets that featured news with cultured (snooty?) voices and opinions that were invariably left-ish.

A certain amount of deregulation and the arrival of cable and satellite broadcasting brought us additional news and information channels, including Fox and C-Span, and these newcomers were considered "the press" too. The old MSM monolith began to show signs of decay and fossilization.

The arrival of the internet, especially as broadband information transfers and more powerful computers made it usable for the masses, has brought on another sea change in the concept of what is "press" and who is a "journalist." The MSM holds that only those who are on the payroll of newspapers, TV or radio stations should be considered journalists, entitled to all the freedoms of the press that the constitution, and law, allows.

Yet should the paycheck the defining guideline, or is it the public dissemination of news and opinion? The MSM turn up their noses at the denizens of the Blogosphere, the computer-wielding, modern-day spiritual descendants of German immigrant John Peter Zenger, precisely because they do not toe the party line and they do not pledge allegiance to the schools of journalism at the various elite schools. The MSM sneers at the bloggers because the blogosphere is not elite. It is not organized. It is not always accurate. It does not always follow the rules of polite discourse. Many of its practioners are unschooled in the finer arts of reporting and editing. In short, it is annoying as hell.

Let's turn the analysis around: The MSM considers itself elite because there are a finite number of positions within it, and MSM owners and editors tightly control the portals through which people enter those positions. The great unwashed need not apply. Is this a good thing? Does the press represent America or American interests?

We would argue that increasingly it does not. Journalists today more often consider themselves citizens of the world, at least for purposes of perspective.

Yes, the MSM is organized. So much so, perhaps, that it lacks a true diversity of opinion in its ranks. Yet the MSM champions diversity for all other Americans as one of the highest goals. Odd, isn't it.

The MSM is not always accurate. Sometimes it can be spectacularly inaccurate, and embarrassingly unwilling to acknowledge, admit or correct its mistakes. This is human nature, and it's okay as long as there is some other form of communication that exists as a check and balance to point out those mistakes.

Most of the mainstream journalists we have known -- and we used to be among them -- can swear like sailors and rarely darken the doorway of church or synagogue. National polling data verifies that the overwhelming majority of those who called themselves "the press" are unlike their readers and viewers. Understand, this is not a crime and it is not our place to judge their lives or lifestyles. But it does mean that often the modern journalist writes from a different moral perspective, one based more on a secular worldview they reinforce as they discuss "the issues" with one another.

The blogosphere, the Pajamahadeen, are a mongrel mixture of the best and worst of America. But what we lack in social refinery we often atone for in zeal for truth, the ability to dialogue and network with others who share some of the same interests, and sheer numerical strength. Thus the nation can witness the deconstruction of a media fraud last fall when Dan Rather and CBS attempted to foist an obviously fake set of Texas Air National Guard documents on to the public airwaves. The wide variety of life experiences of the bloggers, the speed at which news can be disseminated and questions asked, and corrections made: all these came together in the first dramatic experience of a new type of press medium.

Is the blogosphere the eventual replacement for mainstream newspapers, and radio and TV networks? We rather doubt it. Somebody needs to get paid to do the job of reporting facts. That's what newspapers and the electronic press are supposed to do. The oversight of the blogosphere means that there will be public pressure to get back to Job One: basic reporting. Not basic opining.

But within the blogosphere there may arise outlets that, as news reporting ventures, rival the prestige and success of the Old Press. That would be good for America.

The blogosphere isn't perfect, but that's to be expected. Journalism -- the press -- has never been perfect, and usually isn't very pretty. The Founding Fathers reasoned however that it was better to have a nation bombarded with sound and fury, often signifying nothing, than a nation of government-controlled press exactitude.

Are the bloggers journalists? Do they constitute a wing of the "Press"?

Hell, yes!

And the day that the government decides to regulate free speech and press on the internet, whether it is through limitations of access or regulation of "campaign speech," that is the day that both freedoms cease to exist for any citizen.