Gant's book all-in-all thought provoking

After wrapping up Gant's book and considering my thoughts on his views, I have had time to think about what the book really did for me.

I realized that throughout the book I went through what almost everyone is going through with citizen journalism. I had to change my way of thinking. Before reading Gant's book I had never thought of citizen journalism. I never thought of YouTube and MySpace and blogging to be these huge things.

I went through a process of being scared of citizen journalism. This is probably the spot where news organizations and government have stopped in their thought processes.

After reading Gant's arguments and thinking about them for awhile, he makes valid points. With a federal shield law, there should be no worry about everyone wanting to be a journalist. People just aren't that invested.

Kevin Sites.. journalist?

I have been thinking about whether Kevin Sites' journey to war zones is what made him a journalist. (Meaning if that was all Kevin Sites ever did, would he be considered a journalist?)There is no doubt that what he did was brave. The images from the video we watched in class were very real and graphic.

But does traveling to war zones make you a better journalist than someone else? Or a journalist to begin with? Who's to say that reporting on celebrities at the Oscars has a lesser value than reporting in war zones? Yes, that seems like it would have an obvious answer. But people have different values. They place more importance on different things.

Kevin Sites was brave in his journey to make known what is happening in war zones. But does bravery make you a journalist?

Linking

After half a centruy of scholarly work, new documents about the lives of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg have been made public.

"Certainly, after 50 years, the unique historical value of these records outweighs any secrecy rationale," said Thomas S. Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive, which filed the petition, with support from more than a dozen scholars. The archive, based at George Washington University, is a nonprofit group that uses the Freedom of Information Act to challenge government secrecy.

Among the historians were John Lewis Gaddis, the Robert A. Lovett professor of military and naval history at Yale, and Ronald Radosh, adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington and past president of the Historians of American Communism.

"We're All Journalists Now"

The first chapter of “We’re All Journalists Now” made me think it’s a good thing my emphasis isn’t journalism. Of course public relations is effected by freedom of the press too. The first chapter raised the question: why should I spend money on four years of college? If citizen journalism becomes widely accepted, at least by the public, as a reliable source of news then why go to school for it?

It is scary to think that we are coming of a new age full of uncertainty and all we have to rely on is a background of uncertainty.

The press clause has never been a stabling backing. No one really knows what the founding fathers were thinking when they added it. Many people believe that they would not put anything in the First Amendment that was unneeded or redundant. In that case, using the freedom of speech clause and the press clause together wouldn’t work.

So how will we decide who is a journalist?

No one knows why court cases get chosen for review. Courts haven’t come up with any upstanding decisions on the press clause nationally. This poses a problem when the public should be informed of government decisions.
Especially since the press is said to be a check on government.

The press clause falls under an amendment that is supposed to cover fundamental personal rights and freedoms. It says nothing about institutions. This being said, should we really view press as an institution?

In the book it says that journalism should be viewed as an activity and not an institution.

Should the press have special rights then? And would this effect citizen journalism?
What kind of rights would the press have? Withholding information that could save someone’s life?

This brings back the question of who the press is. I think that the court would lean more toward a protection of institution press than personal freedoms.

In that case, it is almost relieving to think that the courts have not made a solid decision on the press clause.