This stands as much chance of happening as licensing or certifying software developers. And news agencies have long since stopped caring about "the better publ

This stands as much chance of happening as licensing or certifying software developers. And news agencies have long since stopped caring about "the better public good" and caring only about quarterly numbers of their stock prices. Even if there was some sort of "certified" journalist, an uncertified editor could easily truncate or otherwise alter an article into unintelligibility. Furthermore, this won't stop news agencies from suppressing news. For example, The State had copies of Sanford's emails to his mistress for 6 months, and chose to neither publish them, nor question the governor. As another example, newspapers such as NY Times and Washington Post chose to conceal the warrantless wiretappings for more than a year. If they had released the news when they got it, in Oct 2004, there would never have been a 2nd term for bush. Likewise, the news media in the US chose to conceal the Abu Ghirab torture abuses for more than a year. What are they hiding now? How would "certifying" or "licensing" them force them into revealing news that they don't want to publish?