"Journalism" and the Planned Parenthood Videos

I was just reading an article about a judge in California issuing a restraining order, or injunction, against the group releasing the Planned Parenthood videos and noticed it referred to "citizen journalists," and that got me thinking; who is a journalist in the internet age?

Congress has tried to define journalists. For example, here is a 2013 article about the Senate Judiciary Committee "sparring" over the definition of journalist. The people we commonly call journalists in the mainstream media look down their sophisticated noses at "citizen journalists," bloggers, talk show peeps and others because, well, as Chris Matthews once said "we went to college for this!"

So, do you have to go to J-school to be a journalist? I tried to take journalism 101 after I retired from the Air Force and went back to college but dropped the course in short order. As a 39 year old military retiree I was very quickly able to discern the attempted indoctrination versus the simple teaching of fact and technique.

As a blogger and sometime radio show host I don't consider myself a "journalist." I consider myself an essayist, an editorialist - an opinionator, if you will, but not a journalist. Miriam-Webster defines a journalist thusly;

journalist

Bottom of Form

noun jour·nal·ist \-nə-list\

Definition of JOURNALIST

1 a :  a person engaged in journalism; especially :  a writer or editor for a news medium

b :  a writer who aims at a mass audience

2:  a person who keeps a journal

 

Here is a little something I found when researching the history of journalism in America:

 

"America's first continuously-published newspaper, the

Boston News-Letter published its first issue on April 24, 1704. John Campbell, a bookseller and postmaster of Boston, was its first editor, printing the newspaper on what was then referred to as a half-sheet."

 

Now, that guy certainly wasn't a "journalist" by today's standards and I don't believe our country was intended to evolve in a way that freezes people out of things. I think our nation was intended to evolve in a way that allowed more and more people to join in, unless, of course, it could lead to serious injury or loss of life such as in the case of the medical profession.

 

The fact is, I believe, in the internet age virtually everyone can be a journalist whether you go to J-school or not. The lack of a journalism degree may hinder you landing that cushy at your local paper but it certainly doesn't mean you cannot be a journalist afforded all of the 1st Amendment protections enjoyed by the establishment media.