Who is a journalist and not?
January 30 2016 By Abiodun Giwa
Sean Penn
Sean Penn got what would have been a blockbuster interview with the kingpin of drug business, Joaquin Guzman Loera, El-Chapo. In fact, the interview was considered a blockbuster before it stopped being a blockbuster, because of the traces of what reports said a professional journalist would not have done in the writing. People have thus been asking whether or not Penn is a journalist or not. Many of the responses to another publication - another interview of a writer who specializes reporting the drug world - said unprintable things about Penn, his tagging himself as a journalist and the mystery behind his El-Chapo's interview, beyond what the world has heard and what may have propelled him for the interview.
Penn has thus been forced on his own to ask about who is a journalist anyway. But few weeks after Penn's odyssey to El-Chapo's bunker, the story of another two writers described as Citizen Journalists surfaced, how they got a story from the Planned Parenthood Federation and the subsequent court trial in which the jury found them guilty of having broken into the Planned Parenthood premises with faked identity cards. The travail of these two citizen journalists has caused a debate about whether there is anything like undercover journalism or not.
When you read Seth Lipsky in the New York Post's "Jail the Journalists", you will see a stout defense of the citizen journalists, the First Amendment and how some liberal newspapers delight n undercover journalism. The same way that Lipsky has defended the cause of the two Citizen Journalists involved in the Planned Parenthood case, Joel Simon, a reputable journalist on the Columbia Journalism Review, published by Columbia University Department of Journalism, has defended Penn, sighting what he called various Penn's journalistic achievements, and wrote that if the authorities in Mexico should attempt questioning Penn's interview of El-Chapo, he would be the first to defend Penn's act.
Just like Simon, Lipsky also belongs to the Columbia Journalism Review. Undoubtedly, both are right about who can be called a journalist, because both Penn and the two Citizen Journalists are writers, and they have got their writings published for public consumption. Since gathering, processing and making information available for public consumption are parts of what journalists do, Penn, the two gentlemen and the lady in the Planned Parenthood case can be seen as journalists.
But why has Simon described the Citizen Journalists as Citizen Journalists and not Journalists? Why are not they being described just as Journalists? Differentiating Journalists from Citizen Journalists is the modern way of showing the difference between professional and trained journalists from those who are into journalism for the love of writing and holding the authorities accountable, but who have no journalistic training. Truly, many Citizen Journalists thrive on the job more than professional and trained Journalists. The trained Journalists have boundaries and would not do certain things that go against the grain of their training and the profession. But the Citizen Journalist does not seem to have bounds and not restricted by regulations. They exercise unfettered freedom.
A professional Journalist would not undertake undercover journalism based on his or her training in the Law of Journalism and media Ethics. The first thing a journalist learns in the classroom about the law of Journalism and media ethics is never to disguise himself or herself in anyway wherever he or she wants to cover a story. You must always first introduce yourself as a reporter. In that wise there is no way a professional can do undercover work. The professional journalist is trained on how to get information using third parties, the type of information that would normally be difficult to source directly without getting . The use of a third party is to avoid ethical questions about gaining access into a meeting without invitation.
A good example was the tape recording of Mitt Romney's statement about his view of the difference between the 1 percent and the 99 percent Americans that crashed his presidential ambition. The recording was done by a non-journalist, who was at the event and gave the recording to journalists for publication.
It is such a case like the one of in which the Citizen Journalists are involved that makes journalism a dangerous work. Do you have to break the law to cover a story? The answer is simply in the negative.But if one has to break the law to make a story as a journalist for the importance attached to the story, then one must be ready to pay the price for such an investigative undertaking. It is what has made investigative journalism a source of fame for practitioners ready for the risk.
When a journalist is called upon to reveal his or her source and he or she refuses to reveal the source, such a problem is capable of getting a journalist into jail.It had actually got some journalists into jail and some others close to the jailhouse. But the most important thing to note here is that if there is no distinction between professional journalists and citizen journalists, there would be no question about who is a journalist or not. The distinction has shown who is a journalist by training and who is not by lack of training.
We know that the guys involved in the Planned Parenthood investigation are citizen journalists, but what is Penn? A writer. Yes, everyone can be a writer, do interviews and write reports. But that does not make the writer a journalist, unless such a writer has spent years understudying professional journalists on the job. As the case is of many journalists with good education, but have never been in any journalism school.
But why would an accomplished person like Penn still wants to be seen as a journalist, when claiming to be a writer would have been enough to allow professional journalists who handle edit his reports and stories to answer the ethical questions arising from his report? Penn insisting to be seen as a journalist shows that there is still something distinguishable in being seen as a journalist.
Penn has thus been forced on his own to ask about who is a journalist anyway. But few weeks after Penn's odyssey to El-Chapo's bunker, the story of another two writers described as Citizen Journalists surfaced, how they got a story from the Planned Parenthood Federation and the subsequent court trial in which the jury found them guilty of having broken into the Planned Parenthood premises with faked identity cards. The travail of these two citizen journalists has caused a debate about whether there is anything like undercover journalism or not.
When you read Seth Lipsky in the New York Post's "Jail the Journalists", you will see a stout defense of the citizen journalists, the First Amendment and how some liberal newspapers delight n undercover journalism. The same way that Lipsky has defended the cause of the two Citizen Journalists involved in the Planned Parenthood case, Joel Simon, a reputable journalist on the Columbia Journalism Review, published by Columbia University Department of Journalism, has defended Penn, sighting what he called various Penn's journalistic achievements, and wrote that if the authorities in Mexico should attempt questioning Penn's interview of El-Chapo, he would be the first to defend Penn's act.
Just like Simon, Lipsky also belongs to the Columbia Journalism Review. Undoubtedly, both are right about who can be called a journalist, because both Penn and the two Citizen Journalists are writers, and they have got their writings published for public consumption. Since gathering, processing and making information available for public consumption are parts of what journalists do, Penn, the two gentlemen and the lady in the Planned Parenthood case can be seen as journalists.
But why has Simon described the Citizen Journalists as Citizen Journalists and not Journalists? Why are not they being described just as Journalists? Differentiating Journalists from Citizen Journalists is the modern way of showing the difference between professional and trained journalists from those who are into journalism for the love of writing and holding the authorities accountable, but who have no journalistic training. Truly, many Citizen Journalists thrive on the job more than professional and trained Journalists. The trained Journalists have boundaries and would not do certain things that go against the grain of their training and the profession. But the Citizen Journalist does not seem to have bounds and not restricted by regulations. They exercise unfettered freedom.
A professional Journalist would not undertake undercover journalism based on his or her training in the Law of Journalism and media Ethics. The first thing a journalist learns in the classroom about the law of Journalism and media ethics is never to disguise himself or herself in anyway wherever he or she wants to cover a story. You must always first introduce yourself as a reporter. In that wise there is no way a professional can do undercover work. The professional journalist is trained on how to get information using third parties, the type of information that would normally be difficult to source directly without getting . The use of a third party is to avoid ethical questions about gaining access into a meeting without invitation.
A good example was the tape recording of Mitt Romney's statement about his view of the difference between the 1 percent and the 99 percent Americans that crashed his presidential ambition. The recording was done by a non-journalist, who was at the event and gave the recording to journalists for publication.
It is such a case like the one of in which the Citizen Journalists are involved that makes journalism a dangerous work. Do you have to break the law to cover a story? The answer is simply in the negative.But if one has to break the law to make a story as a journalist for the importance attached to the story, then one must be ready to pay the price for such an investigative undertaking. It is what has made investigative journalism a source of fame for practitioners ready for the risk.
When a journalist is called upon to reveal his or her source and he or she refuses to reveal the source, such a problem is capable of getting a journalist into jail.It had actually got some journalists into jail and some others close to the jailhouse. But the most important thing to note here is that if there is no distinction between professional journalists and citizen journalists, there would be no question about who is a journalist or not. The distinction has shown who is a journalist by training and who is not by lack of training.
We know that the guys involved in the Planned Parenthood investigation are citizen journalists, but what is Penn? A writer. Yes, everyone can be a writer, do interviews and write reports. But that does not make the writer a journalist, unless such a writer has spent years understudying professional journalists on the job. As the case is of many journalists with good education, but have never been in any journalism school.
But why would an accomplished person like Penn still wants to be seen as a journalist, when claiming to be a writer would have been enough to allow professional journalists who handle edit his reports and stories to answer the ethical questions arising from his report? Penn insisting to be seen as a journalist shows that there is still something distinguishable in being seen as a journalist.
