> If anyone can start their own website and write stuff, without getting any kind of qualification or accreditation, and without following any editorial policy or maintaining any kind of journalistic integrity, and still get credited with a story, then journalism itself has an identity crisis.
So? Why should this be considered a special case? Its no different than programming, for example.
The idea that only authorities should be able to report as journalists is anathema to a free and open, democratic society.
There is an argument that programming should be more like engineering - and you should not be able to do this professionally unless qualified. All of us know that we have a huge mess of bad code and worse practices in various ecosystems, and that we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Relying on open-source "amateur" [0] developers to create key infrastructure has allowed us to move quickly, but not at a very high level of quality.
Holding programming up as the apex of good practice in this area isn't the argument you think it is ;)
[0] Amateur from an engineering discipline perspective.
So? Why should this be considered a special case? Its no different than programming, for example.
The idea that only authorities should be able to report as journalists is anathema to a free and open, democratic society.