03-01-2011, 09:05 PM
Great. A lot of good thoughts to respond to. I don't think I could do it all in a single post, so let me start by focusing on a common theme I'm hearing. That theme is about freedom of the press. I guess people were construing this statement from the OP in a way I didn't at all intend:
Anyone who says they are, or are taken by others to be, a journalist without this accreditation association (IOW, as things are now) would still be considered journalists even with the accreditation association - no matter how many people would or would not get the accreditation. I deliberately didn't use the term "license", since that carries the connotation of government sanction. What I'm proposing is actually a free market idea. Journalists could decide to go through whatever process the association thinks is necessary and then get accredited to use the ACJ after their name in the byline... or, they could choose not to get accredited. But if they got accredited then by using "AJC" with their name in their byline, the journalist would be saying to whoever receives their report that the report would pass certain criteria laid out by the accrediting association. Now, it would be up to the news agencies to decide whether that mattered to them in their hiring and reporting practices. And whether or not it mattered to them probably would depend on whether or not the public would like it and through their choices of where to get news information would demand more of it. Or, the public may decide it doesn't care. Any way you look at it, though, I don't think it decreases freedom to try this. In a roundabout way it could actually benefit freedom.
- Would someone have to get the accreditation to be called a journalist? No, I don't see why that should be the case. Anyone could call themselves a journalist, but they would have to get the accreditation to legitimately put the ACJ after their names on reports.
Anyone who says they are, or are taken by others to be, a journalist without this accreditation association (IOW, as things are now) would still be considered journalists even with the accreditation association - no matter how many people would or would not get the accreditation. I deliberately didn't use the term "license", since that carries the connotation of government sanction. What I'm proposing is actually a free market idea. Journalists could decide to go through whatever process the association thinks is necessary and then get accredited to use the ACJ after their name in the byline... or, they could choose not to get accredited. But if they got accredited then by using "AJC" with their name in their byline, the journalist would be saying to whoever receives their report that the report would pass certain criteria laid out by the accrediting association. Now, it would be up to the news agencies to decide whether that mattered to them in their hiring and reporting practices. And whether or not it mattered to them probably would depend on whether or not the public would like it and through their choices of where to get news information would demand more of it. Or, the public may decide it doesn't care. Any way you look at it, though, I don't think it decreases freedom to try this. In a roundabout way it could actually benefit freedom.