Licensing journalists: a maybe good, maybe terrible, definitely complicated proposal
What is a journalist? What is a journalistic act? What’s the best way to protect the rights of journalists? Can we trust journalists to identify and monitor one another?
This Saturday evening, about 50 journalists and people concerned about the state of journalism today packed into the Upper Library at U of T’s Massey College and discussed these and other difficult questions. The event, Certifiable? A Debate Over Licensing Journalists, was an offshoot of a weekend-long investigative journalism workshop at Ryerson put on by Investigate Reporters and Editors. Many of those gathered at Massey College had just spent hours discussing journalistic principles and practices, but they certainly hadn’t run out of things to say.
The issue up for debate was the idea of licensing journalists, both in general and in the form that Quebec legislators are now considering. Following the recent phone-hacking scandal in the U.K. and the government-commissioned report by Dominique Payette that recommended creating a “professional journalist” status in Quebec, more people are asking whether a system that gives accreditation to journalists can “save” the profession.
Hosted and moderated by two investigative journalists, Rob Cribb and Julian Sher, the four-person panel represented both sides of the debate (though unequally, it turned out). Lise Millette, a Presse Canadienne journalist, was there to present the licensing system proposed by the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec (FPJQ), an organization that represents more than 2,000 journalists in the province. She was, at the start and the end of the debate, the only panelist in favour of the idea, and over the next two hours she defended the FPJQ’s proposal against tough questions from the audience and from the other panelists: CBC executive editor Esther Enkin, American investigative reporter and lecturer on national security journalism Josh Meyer, and media lawyer Bert Bruser.
The details of the FPJQ’s plan aren’t totally pinned down, but essentially it wants to be the body in charge of giving journalists in Quebec a professional status. Those who qualify would have to sign onto a Code of Ethics that the FPJQ is developing with the help of the Quebec Press Council. The FPJQ hopes that committing themselves to these principles will give journalists ammunition to fight back when their bosses ask them to do something they consider un-journalistic. Millette says that due to media concentration in Quebec (Quebecor, for example, reaches 87 per cent of the province’s residents) and increasing financial pressures on smaller publications there, something needs to be done to protect journalists in their jobs and to ensure the public is getting quality news. [Read how FPJQ secretary-general Claude Robillard described the proposal here.]
A long list of issues emerged as the panelists and their audience tried to wrap their heads around what FPJQ is proposing and what they hope to accomplish. For the sake of brevity, here are some of the panelists’ and audience members’ arguments for and against the idea:
In favour of licensing journalists:
- Millette noted that it is less common now for the people who own and run media outlets to have a background in journalism and therefore they are less committed to upholding journalistic principles. Signing onto a standard code of ethics will help journalists argue against unscrupulous practices.
- The government in Quebec, noted Millette, is not doing anything to battle media concentration, which is decreasing the amount and quality of journalistic work in the province. Licensing journalists as professionals would help them advocate for themselves and their work.
- Journalists in Quebec are in favour of licensing: The FPJQ polled its members, and 86.8 per cent of them supported the idea of a “professional status” for journalists.
- Millette also argued that a professional designation would give a stamp of approval to journalists and their work, letting their audience know that their work is trustworthy and that they ascribe to a set of journalistic principles.
- Other countries have successfully implemented licensing systems: Ivor Shapiro, chair of Ryerson’s School of Journalism, noted that Belgium and France both have some kind of designation. In France, they also have a “conscience clause,” which provides protection for journalists who are asked to do something they consider morally questionable.
- Journalism is losing the public’s respect as a profession: One audience member said he used to proudly tell people he worked for the CBC but no longer brings it up because of the negative perception some people have of journalists. Another audience member pointed out that a recent Canadian Journalism Foundation study found that 40 per cent of Canadians think journalists here do things like phone-hacking and paying sources for information. Licensing journalists could help improve the public’s perception of the profession.
- Journalists working at small publications aren’t always governed by codes of ethics like bigger publications have, Shapiro noted. The form of licensing proposed by the FPJQ would give such journalists—and freelancers—a standard set of principles.
Against licensing journalists:
- Enkin, and many others, asked how the FPJQ’s licensing would actually help journalists in conflicts with their bosses, when those bosses had no part in the accreditation and didn’t themselves sign anything or promise to buy into the idea. “What’s the recourse if not everyone’s going to play?” she asked
- Another issue is enforcement. If the FPJQ licensed thousands of journalists, how would they be able to monitor those journalists’ actions and, if they did something that transgressed the code of ethics, what would the punishment be?
- The difficulty of defining who is a journalist and who isn’t: Millette noted that the FPJQ will consider someone a journalist if at least half of their work is journalistic. But what about freelancers? Especially in today’s market, where paid freelancing gigs are harder and harder to come by, many freelancers do as much work as they can but also have to take on other writing gigs or non-media jobs to make ends meet. Will these people be excluded?
- Pat Clawson, an American investigative reporter, spoke to the dangers of journalists determining the accreditation of their peers. He provided the example of the Congressional press pass in the U.S., where he says some journalists in charge of handing them out would exclude competitors and members of the online media, who they didn’t consider “real” journalists.
- It will provide no guarantee of quality: In response to Millette’s assertion that licensing will help readers gauge the quality of a journalist’s work, Meyer said, “The only way for the public to know the quality of a journalist’s work is to read it.”
- Allowing one organization to license journalists could lead to “copycat” licenses, noted Meyer. Other organizations could create nearly identical designations in an attempt to cash in on member fees from journalists who don’t qualify for FPJQ’s “official” accreditation.
- Rather than licensing journalists, why not make sure they have the right tools to do their jobs and protect themselves? That’s what Luis Horacio Nájera, a Mexican journalist currently living in Canada and a 2011 Journalism Fellow at Massey College, said is happening in his home country. In Mexico, journalists put themselves in real danger, facing threats and immense pressures in their work, and he said that professional training is the best way to help journalists do their jobs well.
At the end of the event, an informal poll revealed that very few in the room were in favour of the idea, more were against it, but the majority were unsure (the crowd also eventually bullied Sher—who attempted to uphold his neutrality as moderator—into admitting he was against the idea). The hows and ifs of the proposal are still too many. So while licensing journalists to protect them and their profession sounds nice, it seems the complexity of implementing the idea makes it a non-starter for many.
What do you think of the idea of licensing journalists? Share your thoughts in the comments.
