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| Home Front: Politix |
| Which Journalists Would Get Protected? |
| 2005-10-26 |
| As someone who makes such a lavish living in the First Amendment industry, you might think I'd subscribe to the fashionable, enlightened, extend-your-pinky-to-drink-tea position on free speech issues. But the truth is I don't have much use for guilds. Few professions crave special badges and flip-open credential cases more than the reporting business. Currently, the ink-stained wretches are slavering over moves in Congress to pass federal journalist shield laws. This idea got an extra shove by the investigation of Patrick Fitzgerald in the alleged White House leaking of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative. Some journalists didn't want to reveal their sources, claiming the Constitution gives them an absolute, adamantine and eternal right to protect their sources even if their sources committed a crime and the reporter in question made the commission of that crime possible. Other than the obvious problems that the First Amendment is not a blanket protection to conceal crimes and that nowhere in case law or in the Constitution itself has such a right been established, there's a sticky public policy problem. Who gets to be a journalist? And that question is why federal shield laws are the camel's nose under the tent of journalism licenses. If everybody can be a journalist simply by pecking away at a keyboard, then tens of millions of bloggers, newsletter writers and coupon-clipper weekly editors are journalists. If that's the case, such a sweeping right is unenforceable and dangerous. If, on the other hand, only some people get to be called "journalists," then we've got the makings of a trade guild here. There's been some interesting economic research in recent years on the role of guilds (professional associations, including some unions, which work with the state to require licensing for people seeking similar occupations). Morris Kleiner, a University of Minnesota economist and visiting scholar at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, recently summarized some of his findings in the Wall Street Journal. Even though guilds don't lead to better or safer service, they're on the rise because guilds have been very successful in persuading the public they're better for the consumer even though much of the time they're really better for the members of the guild themselves. In states where a license is required to become, say, a hairdresser, salaries are higher by some 10 to 20 percent. This is partly because the licensing - the fees, extra training, etc. - becomes a barrier to entry for others seeking employment. In states where strict state licensing isn't required, job growth is 20 percent higher. The same dynamic would surely play out if elite journalists got their way. The resentment and vitriol aimed at bloggers and the "new media" at journalism school symposiums and panel discussions is palpable. Is there any doubt that the keymasters of any new state-sanctioned journalism guild would translate that animosity into higher wages for themselves and fewer opportunities for the untrained masses nipping at their heels. This illuminates the fundamental problem with the "enlightened" media's fashionable pose on the First Amendment: It's anti-free speech for anyone without keys to the clubhouse. They want special rights for "real journalists." Well, special rights for some means weaker rights for others. The editors of The New York Times rightly demand untrammeled opportunities to criticize politicians, but they want complex rules and regulations for everyone else - including other politicians! They think the First Amendment offers blanket protection to strippers "expressing" themselves, but citizens eager to criticize a candidate by taking out an ad can be muzzled if they want to take out that ad when it will be most effective - i.e. near election day. The First Amendment was intended to keep political speech free - everything else was open to debate. Today, the leaders of the First Amendment industry see it exactly the other way around. Examiner columnist Jonah Goldberg is editor at large at the National Review Online and a syndicated columnist. |
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #2 Four legs good, two legs better. |
| Posted by: Groluper Ebbelet5837 2005-10-26 17:47 |
| #1 No journalist should be protected. You can say what you want, but don't expect to get off scott free after yelling "fire" in a movie theater. Libel and lies still should be punished as well as cover ups for crimes. |
| Posted by: mmurray821 2005-10-26 15:43 |