Saturday, July 13, 2013

Journalism Is an Act, Not a Profession

That question of journalistic authenticity, though, has been in the news as Congress has debated a “shield law” designed to protect journalists from government prosecution – an outgrowth of the Obama administration’s legal pursuit of people who leak and publish sensitive government information. (Without leaks, there would be little real journalism, by the way. And to government officials, everything is sensitive.)
Sen. Dick Durbin, that noted journalistic expert from Illinois, wrote that “we must define a journalist and the constitutional and statutory protections those journalists should receive.”
Courtesy of AmericaAn outraged Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a law professor, rightly called Durbin a “constitutional ignoramus if he thinks that when the Framers talked about freedom of the press, they were talking about freedom for the press as an institution.” Reynolds was writing in the New York Post, but only Durbin would know if that makes Reynolds a real journalist or a poseur.

http://reason.com/archives/2013/07/12/journalism-is-an-act-not-a-profession 

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