Defining journalism: How a new approach to a definition could revolutionize media freedom

Abstract

Defining who is a journalist is now fraught with difficulty and may well be impossible. The digital revolution has made it possible for anyone with a smart phone to create journalism-like content without necessarily adhering to any of the accepted formal conventions of journalism. Any legal definition that uses that approach is fraught with difficulty, and risks including people who should probably not be covered by the law, or ruling out those who should. This article proposes a novel approach, by considering journalism as a formalized process for gathering, organizing and presenting information according to recognized standards and ethics. Such an approach could form the centrepiece of a Media Freedom Act, and give the industry incentive to respond with a system of voluntary certification that could identify those people who understand and apply those standards and ethics, and whose work would thus deserve the protection of the law.