That's what I'm talking about

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 is opening up these issues. You don't heare about it much on the news, because it presents such a conundrum to the rpfoessional journalists. The protection they want would make them a branch of government, one which isn't elected, or subject to review by Congress (as the courts are) or subject to judicial rule as the executive and legislative branches are. And what would we get in return for this honor? Seems not too much we can't already do for ourselves (or have to because they won't). 

The prosecutor in the Wolf case said he's 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, that there would seem nothing unusual one self-proclaiming as a journalist. It's a sign of how far we've wandered from the ideal.