The journalism profession is not really like a doctor's or an electrician's where you need a certificate to clarify yourself as one. But maybe it should.
A F E W M O N T H S A G O , a friend of mine received a friend request on Facebook from a 'journalist'. There had been nothing strange about it, if it were not for the only time they had met was when he interviewed her. She hesitated for quite some time and finally decided to accept. She now regrets it a bit, but not enough to remove him. Should she?
The point is that people have great respect for journalists, but they also want to keep them from a distance. Journalists 'can' criticize people in what they do, just like people criticize the journalists without feeling that they mess with an actual person.
Future journalists are trained side by side with the future PR consultants. Bloggers, with no training or expertise in journalism, call themselves journalists and 'real' journalists are forced to have an extra job to pay the rent. A blogger is NOT a journalist!
I write two blogs, one personal and one for my studies as a communication, PR & journalist student. During one of my first lectures, one of my lecturers at the University of Queensland said we could call ourselves journalists. Still I cannot call myself a journalist. It partly has to do with this responsibility that you get when you say you are a one. Sure, the profession is not like a doctor's or an electrician's where you need a certificate to classify yourself as one. But maybe it should be.
A journalist is not the same as a person that has some texts published in a newspaper. It is not even enough to have read a journalistic education. I do not call myself an event manager although I have read an event management program.
To me, a journalist, is a person working within journalism, knows the responsibility that entails. Someone who is withholding critical and well briefed. A person who always tries to see things critically and struggling against being fooled. A person with beliefs about ethics and morals, someone who is curious and always open to learn more. Anyone looking for the truth even though it can be a tricky way there.
Quite simply, a person who loves to be wrong.
I am a student and a blogger but I hope I can be wrong many times during my studies and my career, to be able to improve myself and maybe one day, call myself a journalist. And for all the 'real' journalists, please continue to do your great job. Let's criticize each other to make us progress!
Never has journalism been needed as much. True, interesting, neutral and investigative journalism.
It is required, now more than ever!
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