License to Report

We live in messy, complicated world. The sheer amount of information affecting the average person is mind-boggling. Much of that information is quite esoteric: Making sense of financial data or policy numbers with which journalists and readers are confronted each day, and doing so responsibly, can be well beyond readers, even when that information has a direct effect on their lives. And the people we pay to make sense of this mess for us have the power to shape how we act (assuming we act on information). So, it seems pretty reasonable for us to demand some sort of guarantee that the people to whom we entrust the arduous task of sorting out and delivering important, contextualized information will do so well and responsibly. A case, you might say, for licensing journalists. It’s in the public interest.

There’s another argument for licensing journalists. The news industry has data to show that readers and viewers tend to view all journalists as one monolithic block, unified in its efforts, intentions and ethics. (I’ll break here while you chuckle.) Media savvy viewers/readers and news junkies excepted, many news consumers understand neither the vast differences in values inherent to different media (i.e., the broadcast news ethic vs. the newspaper ethic vs. the magazine ethic) nor the vast differences in practices among organizations within each medium. (Though viewers/readers certainly do have a in inkling about what goes on inside a news organization – “This paper is so conservative” or “This station is so sensationalized” – they don’t tend to have a grasp on the competing theories of journalism that generate the results they see.) Because readers/viewers tend to see all journalists as representative of a unified group, the folly of one journalist damages the reputation and credibility of all journalists. If credibility is the journalist and news organizations’ most valuable asset and one journalists’ folly can damage all journalists, then it’s in the interest of journalists and news organizations to license journalists and make sure they conform to and uphold a set of values common to the endeavor.

So that, in my view, is what licensing journalism would solve: It would be a guarantee that the people we pay to analyze and deliver our information are competent and it would help protect the credibility of and trust in journalism overall, which is at a low ebb. But let’s look at some of problems with credentialing journalists.

First, there’s this question: Who’s going to license journalists and how will it be done? In other words, who’s interests will be represented in selecting who’s a journalist and who is not? After all, the entire idea of licensing journalists is predicated on keeping out some people who want to be journalists. The government can’t be involved in licensing journalists, right? That would be a clear case of censorship: The government doesn’t want person X to become a journalist and denies person X his/her credentials. But what happens when journalists are licensed by a media body? That body will inevitably be controlled by monies interests and readers will certain know that. It’ll be a tough sell to convince readers/viewers that corporate censorship is any better than the government variety.

Another question: Who enforces the licensing of journalists? If a lawyer or doctor practices without a license, they’ll be thrown in jail. Would journalists want to be pulled away from their keyboard in cuffs for reporting without a license? That seems dangerous.

These are big problems. There’s also the fact that licensing or distinguishing journalists would require homogenizing practices and ethics within journalism – a major threat to the robustness of ideas in journalism. Overall, licensing journalists or making them formally “more equal” than others has dangerous consequences for journalism.