Define journalists by what they do
In October 2016, La Presse journalist Patrick Lagacé discovered police had been monitoring his communications and tracking his movements in an apparent effort to uncloak one of his sources. The uproar was such that within a year, Canada’s Parliament joined other nations in enacting a so-called shield law, conferring on journalists — and only journalists — special statutory rights to protect confidential sources.
The beneficiaries cheered their new right as a major step for press freedom, despite its delineation in law of who is and who is not a journalist for the purposes of the protection. The Canada Evidence Act limited the new privilege to those paid to produce information for “dissemination by the media” as part of their regular work.
A year on, the question of how, or whether, to demarcate who qualifies as a journalist has returned in louder, more insistent terms with the federal government’s pledge to introduce a tax credit rebating an unspecified percentage of the labour costs of newsrooms.
Though there certainly are better and worse ways to go about it, deciding who is a journalist for particular circumstances is neither novel nor overly vexing.
For starters, the mere existence of a definition does not infringe on anyone’s right to report and publish; it simply provides some with the advantage of a shield law or tax credit.
Courts, police and sports teams regularly draw distinctions that have proven acceptable to journalists. Those deemed bona fide get to attend closed sessions of trials, interview sweaty hockey players in their dressing room sanctums and secure access to the Parliamentary press gallery, as determined by other journalists.
Jurisprudence, academic analysis and democratic practice often involve the exercise of similar judgments. Some European countries, for example, have historically provided forms of public support to (literally) card-carrying journalists and their employers.
In libel cases, journalists will often defend themselves by arguing they responsibly followed industry norms of fair practice.
The means of defining journalists tend to fall into one of two categories. The first is through inclusion within a class of peers, perhaps based on who they work for (as with the vague criteria of the shield law), some kind of governmentendorsed certification (common in countries with Mediterranean traditions), or membership in a recognized peer organization (comparable with law societies and colleges of physicians).
The alternative to this class method is a functional definition based on what journalists do and how they do it, not their professional affiliations. This functional approach is grounded in norms attached to the practice of journalism, such as making efforts to ascertain the accuracy of facts pertaining to current events, and then assembling this information into stories and analysis made available for the benefit of the public. The content of a report is not the critical factor, nor even its intent, but rather that the journalistic equivalent of due process is followed.
Overall, a functional definition is less exclusionary than an attempt to establish a professional class of journalists. But the unit of measurement should be news organizations and not the more intrusive assessment of individual journalists.
Whether large or small, national or local, print, broadcast or digital, newsrooms aggregate reporting and editing resources, provide developmental training, uphold standards and furnish legal and logistical support. They are where most journalists reside or, in the case of freelancers, sell their work.
To qualify, these newsrooms must dedicate a minimum threshold of resources to the critical task of producing original stories to inform citizens about matters of public importance. They might even be asked to provide the public a means of redress via a media council or create entry positions for young journalists.
Whatever one may think of whether journalists and their publishers merit public support, defining them by what they do, rather than who they are, should not offend press freedom.
It’s time to move on to the harder questions, such as how to prevent governments from gaining leverage over journalists or how to keep public funds for journalism from leaking into dividends, interest payments or executive bonuses.