“Any idiot can pick up a pen and a notebook and call himself a journalist – and many of them do.”
A couple days ago the Oregonian ran a follow-up on a story that’s been brewing for a while. The Lake Oswego City Council is drafting an asinine definition of what constitutes a journalist. The brewhaha started when a blogger for Loaded Orygun attempted to sit in on a closed executive session of the city council. Normally, journalists in Oregon are privy to these meetings, although under the agreement that they don’t report on them.
The Lake Oswego City Council wasn’t happy about some uppity blogger trying to horn in on their meeting, hence the proposed definition. This is the current draft of the city council’s requirements to be “a journalist:”
• Regular reporting on the Lake Oswego City Council
• Multiple personnel with defined roles
• Registration with the state Corporation Division
• Reporting “conducted continuously (at least weekly) and permanently”
• Publications or broadcasts that include “at least 25 percent news content”
• Media representatives would be allowed to attend executive sessions if they provide evidence that includes “proof satisfactory to the City Council that the person is gathering news,” along with a press badge, a recently published news article with their byline or an editor’s note on letterhead.
Even worse news from the Big O:
To avoid a patchwork of different city or county media policies, the Legislature might have to enact a clearer definition of “media,” said Paul Nolte, legal services program consultant for the League of Oregon Cities.
Journalists and proponents of free speech should find any attempt by government to define “journalist” unsettling. The first step to regulating and prohibiting is to define. Without a proper definition, it’s hard for the government to get its slimy tentacles around something (to wit: the Supreme Court’s sisyphean attempts to define obscenity).
Also consider: I fulfill almost all of these requirements as a reporter for the Oregon Commentator, yet I’m pretty sure I’m the exact type of person the Lake Oswego City Council (or some similar body) doesn’t want sitting in on their executive sessions. Once they figured that out, there would no doubt be even stricter requirements.
The article also quotes UO journalism professor Kyu Youm, who is a damn fine First Amendment scholar:
“Sometimes, bloggers are now able to provide some wonderful sources of information in addition to what the public may find in the traditional news media,” he said. “I think the information gatherers should not be limited to the traditional media.”
* Headline quote by Sean Scully, freelance journalist
