From: Steven M. Bellovin (no email)
Date: Wed Apr 05 2000 - 10:23:41 EDT
In message <>, Shawn McMahon write
s:
>
> At 01:11 AM 4/5/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>
> >the Internet? I don't think they tattoo 'Journalist' on your head
> >when you get licenced, and I'd not trust a JPEG of a picture - it's
> >too easy to fake with Photoshop. ;)
>
> You don't get licensed.
>
> Some folks mistake a "Press Pass" for a license, but here's how you get a
> press pass:
>
> Somebody prints it and puts your name and, possibly, picture on it.
>
> Sometimes; when I was in radio, our press passes didn't even have
> names. We just gave 'em to any of our journalists who needed them for a
> specific event. Carried one a few times myself. They were professionally
> printed with our logo, via a commercial printer who wasn't producing
> anything that couldn't be done just as well on an HP Color Laserjet. Some
> places printed theirs on cheap inkjets.
>
> A journalist is anybody who writes news stories.
>
> All of the above applies to the USA only. I can't speak for other
> countries that may have funky methods of generating extra tax income by
> requiring some kind of bizarre license to practice what is, in the US,
> guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
>
In general, you're right, but there are exceptions. At least in New York City
circa 1972, the Police Department would issue press passes to "working
journalists" -- and these were the only passes that would get you past police
lines to cover a story. This was particularly grating to me, since I was a
reporter for a college newspaper and I was trying to cover assorted
demonstrations that had shut down my school and spilled over into the streets
-- but college papers didn't count, as far as they were concerned... We did
the best we could with home-made press badges, in the hope that this would
give us some protection against having our heads cracked, and perhaps it did
work. On the other hand, I don't remember taking the picture I snapped of the
head of the Red Squad standing by while a uniformed riot officer clubbed a
woman lying on the ground -- I was too busy running away from the police
charge, just like everyone else...
Anyway -- that experience gave me a strong dislike for any arbitrary attempt
to define a "real" journalist. A journalist is as a journalist does -- and,
whether you like the story or not, or like Cook or not, his decision to
publish was completely in accord with the standards of his profession.
--Steve Bellovin
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