Public Radio Manifesto, part 1

Saturday, February 17, 2007 by Dave Winer.

When Judith Miller went to jail, I was against her getting a special deal because she's a journalist. I want all of us to have equal protection, everyone is a journalist now, or no one is. 

The case of Josh Wolf re-opens these issues. The prosecutor said Wolf is a journalist only in his imagination, and I agree, and that's the point. What other ratification should it require to be a journalist. In the country as the founding fathers imagined it, we would all be so involved in the governing, and in the evaluation of government, that there would seem nothing unusual in one self-proclaiming as a journalist. It's a sign of how far we've wandered from the ideal that the prosecutor seems to be ridiculing Wolf instead of celebrating his pride of citizenship.