Do Journalists Deserve Special Status?

If anyone with a camera, computer, or blog can be considered a journalist, does it make sense for laws to create special protections for journalists? Or if a journalist must be someone employed by a media organization, someone who earns a regular salary and is specifically tasked with collecting and disseminating news and information, does it make sense to extend special legal protections only to that group? The question has been raised most recently in Iraq, South Africa and Turkey. It’s a sensitive issue even here in the US, where courts have often debated whether anyone with a blog should be considered a journalist.

Furthermore, creating protection status for journalists calls into question the arguably important divide between governments and journalists. If governments are expected to protect journalists, should journalists then be more careful about what they write about those in power? Compare this debate to when the US military, at the start of the war in Iraq, decided to embed journalists with military units. Some journalists criticized the move as it put journalists in the direct position of reporting on their protectors, putting them in the awkward position of mitigating how critical their reports might be.

Many Iraqi journalists and international organizations, like the Committee to Protect Journalists, have opposed a law that has been stalled in their parliament and which would extend its protections only to those journalists affiliated with the Iraq Journalists’ Syndicate. Some argue that this would exclude editors, commentators, bloggers, citizen journalists and freelancers. Requiring a contract prepared and authorized by the syndicate may be tantamount to requiring journalists to register themselves as such. Similarly, in South Africa, a proposed Media Appeals Tribunal would be given authority to discipline journalists. At the same time, the South African Parliament is debating a so-called “protection of information” bill that would restrict access to government information. Those who are found to violate the law could face up to 25 years in prison.

Earlier last month the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Turkey failed to protect journalist and newspaper publisher Hrant Dink, who was murdered in front of his newspaper’s office in 2007. ECHR ordered Turkey to pay the family 105,000 Euros in compensation. In its ruling, the ECHR said that Turkish authorities had been warned that ultra-nationalists were planning to assassinate Dink, for what they perceived to be his anti-Turkish writings. Consequently, the ECHR is holding Turkey responsible for Dink’s death.

The ruling at the ECHR and the proposed laws in Iraq and South Africa raise an interesting question. Is the government responsible for protecting journalists? Are journalists a protected class of citizens, which is tricky territory in a digital world where anyone can be considered a journalist. What do you think? Is it a slippery slope? Or is it a matter of protecting journalists’ rights?

*Photo source