Who is a journalist and who should you trust with the news?

Carol Forsloff - An article a few years ago in SFGate addressed government's new strategies for defining and restricting who is a journalist.  One of the biggest issues has to do with bloggers vs. journalists.  How do you tell which is which?  Is it just the format they use?What does the law say?

The issue, folks say, has both ethical and legal complications.

It is possible, for an example, as one writer observed, for a 16-year-old to have a press pass and have at it, even on major stories.  Is it reasonable to restrict such an individual who may be able to accurately report an incident very well.

Then there is long-distance, armchair journalism, a writer penning information about something in France, a Frenchman reporting on American politics.  Is that reasonable and is it fair?

There are also legal questions that have been addressed in some recent decisions regarding defamation.  If a blogger claims protection for presenting negative information about an individual, and that same individual loses business or stature, some courts, like recently in New Jersey, will maintain a blogger isn't a journalist and is therefore not protected.

In the history of journalism, the original journalists were pamphleteers who provided local communities information they needed, often for survival itself.  They helped to raise militia during times of crises and warned folks of impending dangers.  They also criticized government itself, leading Thomas Jefferson to maintain that he would rather have a free press than any other freedom, since this alone would impact government and how it did its work.

Therefore the value of journalism has long been entrenched in most countries, but with the advent of the Internet has brought complications as well.

James Kunstler is a journalist who has written for Rolling Stone and the New York Times, among many other publications listed on his resume.  He is a man of strong opinions on the environment and America's dependency on cars and is known in some circles for that.

He writes a blog; his articles are there for people to read now and then, and are passed along on email chains for those who want the best of opinion and news.

The construct of a blog allows Kunstler and other journalists the ease of posting stories wthout the intricacies required by websites where pages have to interrelate in a specific fashion or can't be read.  Most writers aren't webmasters, but writers, they complain.  The blog is a tool for that reason.

These are the ethical and practical issues facing journalists today.

The notions are left to present and debate, as they are in journalism schools and in media departments everywhere.

In the meantime, Bob Woodward, an investigative reporter, has a definition that can give folks pause, given his story that brought down the government of Richard Nixon, thus impact on history itself.  He asserts that for the most part people are attached to what he calls celebrity journalism, either making celebrities through stories and covering celebrities with the same energy, verve and level of importance as serious news stories.  He refers to this as the "Paris Hilton - Kim Kardashian factor."  

At the same round table discussion about the definitions and tasks of journalism, Carl Bernstein challenged the idea of giving equal time to differing political agendas.  He said there are difficult consequences when folks give the same amount of time to Donald Trump's question about the Obama birth certificate and what Hillary Clinton might have said as Secretary of State.  Theme and level of importance of that theme for the news is part of how newsrooms select what to publish.  That issue is wrapped up in the choices of offering what readers want or what they need, especially when those wants and needs conflict.

Bloggers and journalists make mistakes in reporting. When can they be sued? Challenges are often made about defamation, however the complainant must demonstrate harm, usually in monetary terms.  Bloggers, who may offer information in the form of advice, if they portray themselves as experts and an individual is harmed by taking that advice, they may open themselves up to liability.

His is one of the opinions journalists examine themselves, as they wrestle with bloggers, citizen journalists, their colleagues, themselves and sort out who is a journalist now and .  How will that definition impact the dissemination of information in the ways defined by Jefferson or Woodward?

Jefferson's definition was this:  education, information and holding power to account, which with Woodward's appraisal gives parameters perhaps for courts, the federal government and for journalists themselves to examine.

And the courts have decided that bloggers are held to the same standards in the courts when they report news and portray themselves with the same expertise to do it as journalists.  So ethics become a deciding factor in establishing the boundaries, as those boundaries merge and become one when it comes to fairness and balance in reporting.