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Journalist is not loosely defined. FTA: >While we recognize the importance and the rights of the private citizen who snaps a photo or video of an arrest, this

Journalist is not loosely defined. FTA: >While we recognize the importance and the rights of the private citizen who snaps a photo or video of an arrest, this site will only cover individuals who self-identify as journalists and have some track record of journalistic work. Splitting hairs over the semantics of the word 'journalistic' is an attempt to discredit the study about authoritarianism being at an all time high in the U.S. You have only to look at the numerous comorbid attempts to throw out broad swaths of democratically placed votes to see that it's not about "but are they a true journalist?"

pc86 6y ago
If you take a picture of something happening on your street and write a blog post about it, you are not a journalist. If you wouldn't be granted press credentials for something, you're probably not a journalist. If it's a side gig you don't intend to make a living doing, you're very likely not a journalist. There are plenty of instances where someone can fit into the article's definition of "journalist" where they probably shouldn't.
- slg 6y ago
  Would you say people aren't software developers unless they are employed by a company to predominately develop software? Because your comment certainly reads like that type of gatekeeping regarding who is and is not a journalist.
  - mosdave 6y ago
    > Would you say people aren't software developers unless they are employed by a company to predominately develop software? Yes, without question. It's tautological.
    - 867-5309 6y ago
      what about unemployed/retired software developers, and open source contributors?
      - tick_tock_tick 6y ago
        Doesn't the fact that you had to use different language to communicate their status lead into their point?
        867-5309 6y ago
        no, it questions it
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      It would perhaps be tautological if the OP had qualified professional software developers, but the tautological definition for "software developer" is "anyone who develops software (irrespective of whether they do it professionally)". If we're going to pick nits, we may as well be accurate, right?
      - slg 6y ago
        Which was exactly my point. They are limiting the title of "journalist" to exclusively people who have been anointed as journalists by some gatekeeping entity. This rules out hobbyist, freelancers, self employed people, people just breaking into the industry, and all sorts of other people. The software developing equivalents of those people are inarguably part of the software development community. Why wouldn't their counterparts in another industry be considered journalists?
        80386 6y ago
        If you don't rule out hobbyists, freelancers, and the self-employed, I can declare myself a journalist, start a blog or a Twitter, and start throwing Molotov cocktails, and if I get arrested for it, that's another arrest of a journalist. And as a Molotov-cocktail-throwing opponent of the regime, I want to raise the number of arrests of journalists, because that makes the regime look bad, as shown by this thread. Even if every single arrest is of someone like me - a left-radical with a Twitter account, not Walter Cronkite or whoever - it's unlikely that anyone will bother to check, and even more unlikely that, if anyone bothers to check, very many other people will hear about it.
        slg 6y ago
        Where is this trope of Molotov throwing journalists coming from? I have seen it multiple times in this thread and it is just bizarre. No one would consider someone throwing a Molotov a journalist, no one would count such an arrest as the arrest of a journalist, and no one would consider the arrest an attack on press freedom.
  - karaterobot 6y ago
    The fact that arrests of journalists are being tracked implies that some gatekeeping about who is a journalist is necessary. The clearer the definition is, the more meaningful the statistics will be. That is the only way we would actually be able track whether journalists are being targeted by police.
    - slg 6y ago
      There is a difference between defining a category of people and gatekeeping a category of people.
      - pc86 6y ago
        What's the difference?
        slg 6y ago
        The dictionary definitions of the two might be similar, but there is a big difference in connotation and modern usage. I would say the focus is on opposite sides of the spectrum. When you are defining a group, the primary focus is on who should be included. The focus of gatekeeping is on the people who should be excluded. This is usually done in order to raise the status of those who are included or those who are setting the rules for inclusion. Those rules are often arbitrary or draconian and are usually set by some central authority (or someone who feels they have such authority). This authority will then be the one who doles out permission for others to participate. That is where the software developer example comes in. Anyone can join the open source software development community and they will only be judged on the merit of their contribution. They might have never contributed to any OSS. They might have never been paid to develop software. They might have no formal education in software development. None of that would matter if we are defining people based on the merit of their work. However they would likely be excluded in a system that relies on gatekeeping.
        esyir 6y ago
        A definition of journalists that excludes small scale bloggers, and such would create a different population from say, one that comprised "anyone who self identifies as a journalist", for instance.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  I admittedly haven't read the article yet (I'll carry the shame until my dying day, etc), but does it take into account that we've had a lot more unrest than usual this year? Even without an uptick in authoritarianism, I would expect more journalists to be arrested in a year with lots of riots and protests against the police than in a calm year. Specifically, you have record numbers of journalists working in close proximity to police officers who (warranted or not) are working long hours with people shouting in their faces (let's say, "conditions for which they're inadequately trained"). Maybe you'll argue that it's authoritarianism either way, and maybe you're technically right, but a top-down directive to arrest journalists sounds a lot different (and scarier) than the situation I described above.
  - znpy 6y ago
    > I admittedly haven't read the article yet (...), but does it take into account that we've had a lot more unrest than usual this year? If you have more unrest than usual (and it shouldn't be usual at all to have unrest) it's even more important to have more journalists circulating freely and writing/publishing freely: that's how you get to see and understand what's actually going on. If you don't have journalists doing their job freely, you only have the state propaganda to listen to.
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      No one is arguing that journalists are unimportant, only that an increase in journalist arrests could be a really scary thing like authoritarianism or it could be that they just had a lot more contact with crankier cops.
      - znpy 6y ago
        Oh yeah I agree with that, I was just arguing that especially because the US had more unrest it makes even more problematic that journalists got arrested. That's a symptom of the fact that the establishment does not want the press to document what it's doing, to the point that it's arresting journalists.
- 80386 6y ago
  > If you wouldn't be granted press credentials for something, you're probably not a journalist. But if you would, you might still not be. I once got press credentials (and a steep press discount to an event) because I wrote for a group blog and knew a guy.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  > If you take a picture of something happening on your street and write a blog post about it, you are not a journalist. Yes, you are, and should be protected. > If you wouldn't be granted press credentials for something, you're probably not a journalist. This is a horrific definition. Being a journalist can't be defined by the willingness of the subjects to be covered. That's stenography. > If it's a side gig you don't intend to make a living doing, you're very likely not a journalist. So belief in anything is evidence that you aren't a journalist. Journalists are defined by their income.
  - zaroth 6y ago
    >> If you take a picture of something happening on your street and write a blog post about it, you are not a journalist. > Yes, you are, and should be protected. Protected from what? Being arrested for recording a public event, surely. Being arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail, surely not. So the crucial distinction is what are these journalists being arrested for, and also do we have a surge of people who are trying to cover their own knowing illegal behavior by wearing a PRESS badge.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  With the collapse of local newspapers -- and what local newspapers remain often eschew investigative reporting due to lack of resources or unwillingness to alienate patrons -- there are many places where someone maintaining a local news blog as a side gig is the important local press. These people definitely deserve to be seen as "real journalists".
tristor 6y ago
> Splitting hairs over the semantics of the word 'journalistic' is an attempt to discredit the study about authoritarianism being at an all time high in the U.S. Those two things are not the same, and in many ways aren't even connected within the context of this article. 1. The article's definition of journalist would allow me to claim that I'm a journalist. I would never consider myself as such, nor would any reasonable person, yet my photography has adorned the covers of published books, my writing has been published on respected news sites, and I've been invited as a speaker to conferences as an authority on a variety of subject matters. "Some track record of journalistic work" is a very low bar, depending on the meaning of "journalistic work" and "some track record". "self-identifying as a journalist" is an even lower bar. 2. If you'd read the article, they even assert that half the incidents reported occurred to people not associated to any known or major media organizations and presumed to be freelancers. So, I don't think it's just "splitting hairs", the definition is central to the validity of their methodology. Is there a problem with growing authoritarianism in the US? In my opinion, yes, unequivocally. I've been discussing this matter in my circles for more than a decade. The revelations from Snowden, the work the CATO Institute/Radley Balko did on police militarization and brutality, no-knock warrants, asset forfeiture, etc. are all strong evidence of a persistent and growing authoritarian trend in the US. That may or may not validate the evidence in the article, but the way the article states it's evidence and methodology comes very much down to semantics about what it means to be a "journalist", and that is not a decided question in 2020. One can recognize and acknowledge growing authoritarianism in the US while at the same time pointing out flaws in the article and it's associated study methodology. I think it is not in good faith to try to tar people who bring up good questions about definition as "splitting hairs", or being pro-authoritarian, or in other ways trying to straw man their position. You can be anti-authoritarian, be against police brutality and the suppression of the press, have observed with your own eyes credentialed reporters being harmed and assaulted by the police in 2020, and still want to know with some specificity what this study considers to be a "journalist" for the purpose of reporting their stats.

pc86 6y ago

If you take a picture of something happening on your street and write a blog post about it, you are not a journalist. If you wouldn't be granted press credentials for something, you're probably not a journalist. If it's a side gig you don't intend to make a living doing, you're very likely not a journalist. There are plenty of instances where someone can fit into the article's definition of "journalist" where they probably shouldn't.

slg 6y ago
Would you say people aren't software developers unless they are employed by a company to predominately develop software? Because your comment certainly reads like that type of gatekeeping regarding who is and is not a journalist.
- mosdave 6y ago
  > Would you say people aren't software developers unless they are employed by a company to predominately develop software? Yes, without question. It's tautological.
  - 867-5309 6y ago
    what about unemployed/retired software developers, and open source contributors?
    - tick_tock_tick 6y ago
      Doesn't the fact that you had to use different language to communicate their status lead into their point?
      - 867-5309 6y ago
        no, it questions it
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    It would perhaps be tautological if the OP had qualified professional software developers, but the tautological definition for "software developer" is "anyone who develops software (irrespective of whether they do it professionally)". If we're going to pick nits, we may as well be accurate, right?
    - slg 6y ago
      Which was exactly my point. They are limiting the title of "journalist" to exclusively people who have been anointed as journalists by some gatekeeping entity. This rules out hobbyist, freelancers, self employed people, people just breaking into the industry, and all sorts of other people. The software developing equivalents of those people are inarguably part of the software development community. Why wouldn't their counterparts in another industry be considered journalists?
      - 80386 6y ago
        If you don't rule out hobbyists, freelancers, and the self-employed, I can declare myself a journalist, start a blog or a Twitter, and start throwing Molotov cocktails, and if I get arrested for it, that's another arrest of a journalist. And as a Molotov-cocktail-throwing opponent of the regime, I want to raise the number of arrests of journalists, because that makes the regime look bad, as shown by this thread. Even if every single arrest is of someone like me - a left-radical with a Twitter account, not Walter Cronkite or whoever - it's unlikely that anyone will bother to check, and even more unlikely that, if anyone bothers to check, very many other people will hear about it.
        slg 6y ago
        Where is this trope of Molotov throwing journalists coming from? I have seen it multiple times in this thread and it is just bizarre. No one would consider someone throwing a Molotov a journalist, no one would count such an arrest as the arrest of a journalist, and no one would consider the arrest an attack on press freedom.
- karaterobot 6y ago
  The fact that arrests of journalists are being tracked implies that some gatekeeping about who is a journalist is necessary. The clearer the definition is, the more meaningful the statistics will be. That is the only way we would actually be able track whether journalists are being targeted by police.
  - slg 6y ago
    There is a difference between defining a category of people and gatekeeping a category of people.
    - pc86 6y ago
      What's the difference?
      - slg 6y ago
        The dictionary definitions of the two might be similar, but there is a big difference in connotation and modern usage. I would say the focus is on opposite sides of the spectrum. When you are defining a group, the primary focus is on who should be included. The focus of gatekeeping is on the people who should be excluded. This is usually done in order to raise the status of those who are included or those who are setting the rules for inclusion. Those rules are often arbitrary or draconian and are usually set by some central authority (or someone who feels they have such authority). This authority will then be the one who doles out permission for others to participate. That is where the software developer example comes in. Anyone can join the open source software development community and they will only be judged on the merit of their contribution. They might have never contributed to any OSS. They might have never been paid to develop software. They might have no formal education in software development. None of that would matter if we are defining people based on the merit of their work. However they would likely be excluded in a system that relies on gatekeeping.
      - esyir 6y ago
        A definition of journalists that excludes small scale bloggers, and such would create a different population from say, one that comprised "anyone who self identifies as a journalist", for instance.
throwaway894345 6y ago
I admittedly haven't read the article yet (I'll carry the shame until my dying day, etc), but does it take into account that we've had a lot more unrest than usual this year? Even without an uptick in authoritarianism, I would expect more journalists to be arrested in a year with lots of riots and protests against the police than in a calm year. Specifically, you have record numbers of journalists working in close proximity to police officers who (warranted or not) are working long hours with people shouting in their faces (let's say, "conditions for which they're inadequately trained"). Maybe you'll argue that it's authoritarianism either way, and maybe you're technically right, but a top-down directive to arrest journalists sounds a lot different (and scarier) than the situation I described above.
- znpy 6y ago
  > I admittedly haven't read the article yet (...), but does it take into account that we've had a lot more unrest than usual this year? If you have more unrest than usual (and it shouldn't be usual at all to have unrest) it's even more important to have more journalists circulating freely and writing/publishing freely: that's how you get to see and understand what's actually going on. If you don't have journalists doing their job freely, you only have the state propaganda to listen to.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    No one is arguing that journalists are unimportant, only that an increase in journalist arrests could be a really scary thing like authoritarianism or it could be that they just had a lot more contact with crankier cops.
    - znpy 6y ago
      Oh yeah I agree with that, I was just arguing that especially because the US had more unrest it makes even more problematic that journalists got arrested. That's a symptom of the fact that the establishment does not want the press to document what it's doing, to the point that it's arresting journalists.
80386 6y ago
> If you wouldn't be granted press credentials for something, you're probably not a journalist. But if you would, you might still not be. I once got press credentials (and a steep press discount to an event) because I wrote for a group blog and knew a guy.
pessimizer 6y ago
> If you take a picture of something happening on your street and write a blog post about it, you are not a journalist. Yes, you are, and should be protected. > If you wouldn't be granted press credentials for something, you're probably not a journalist. This is a horrific definition. Being a journalist can't be defined by the willingness of the subjects to be covered. That's stenography. > If it's a side gig you don't intend to make a living doing, you're very likely not a journalist. So belief in anything is evidence that you aren't a journalist. Journalists are defined by their income.
- zaroth 6y ago
  >> If you take a picture of something happening on your street and write a blog post about it, you are not a journalist. > Yes, you are, and should be protected. Protected from what? Being arrested for recording a public event, surely. Being arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail, surely not. So the crucial distinction is what are these journalists being arrested for, and also do we have a surge of people who are trying to cover their own knowing illegal behavior by wearing a PRESS badge.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
With the collapse of local newspapers -- and what local newspapers remain often eschew investigative reporting due to lack of resources or unwillingness to alienate patrons -- there are many places where someone maintaining a local news blog as a side gig is the important local press. These people definitely deserve to be seen as "real journalists".

tristor 6y ago

> Splitting hairs over the semantics of the word 'journalistic' is an attempt to discredit the study about authoritarianism being at an all time high in the U.S. Those two things are not the same, and in many ways aren't even connected within the context of this article. 1. The article's definition of journalist would allow me to claim that I'm a journalist. I would never consider myself as such, nor would any reasonable person, yet my photography has adorned the covers of published books, my writing has been published on respected news sites, and I've been invited as a speaker to conferences as an authority on a variety of subject matters. "Some track record of journalistic work" is a very low bar, depending on the meaning of "journalistic work" and "some track record". "self-identifying as a journalist" is an even lower bar. 2. If you'd read the article, they even assert that half the incidents reported occurred to people not associated to any known or major media organizations and presumed to be freelancers. So, I don't think it's just "splitting hairs", the definition is central to the validity of their methodology. Is there a problem with growing authoritarianism in the US? In my opinion, yes, unequivocally. I've been discussing this matter in my circles for more than a decade. The revelations from Snowden, the work the CATO Institute/Radley Balko did on police militarization and brutality, no-knock warrants, asset forfeiture, etc. are all strong evidence of a persistent and growing authoritarian trend in the US. That may or may not validate the evidence in the article, but the way the article states it's evidence and methodology comes very much down to semantics about what it means to be a "journalist", and that is not a decided question in 2020. One can recognize and acknowledge growing authoritarianism in the US while at the same time pointing out flaws in the article and it's associated study methodology. I think it is not in good faith to try to tar people who bring up good questions about definition as "splitting hairs", or being pro-authoritarian, or in other ways trying to straw man their position. You can be anti-authoritarian, be against police brutality and the suppression of the press, have observed with your own eyes credentialed reporters being harmed and assaulted by the police in 2020, and still want to know with some specificity what this study considers to be a "journalist" for the purpose of reporting their stats.