North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: peering wars revisited? PSI vs Exodus
In message <[email protected]>, Shawn McMahon write s: > > At 01:11 AM 4/5/2000 -0400, you wrote: > > >the Internet? I don't think they tattoo 'Journalist' on your head > >when you get licenced, and I'd not trust a JPEG of a picture - it's > >too easy to fake with Photoshop. ;) > > You don't get licensed. > > Some folks mistake a "Press Pass" for a license, but here's how you get a > press pass: > > Somebody prints it and puts your name and, possibly, picture on it. > > Sometimes; when I was in radio, our press passes didn't even have > names. We just gave 'em to any of our journalists who needed them for a > specific event. Carried one a few times myself. They were professionally > printed with our logo, via a commercial printer who wasn't producing > anything that couldn't be done just as well on an HP Color Laserjet. Some > places printed theirs on cheap inkjets. > > A journalist is anybody who writes news stories. > > All of the above applies to the USA only. I can't speak for other > countries that may have funky methods of generating extra tax income by > requiring some kind of bizarre license to practice what is, in the US, > guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. > In general, you're right, but there are exceptions. At least in New York City circa 1972, the Police Department would issue press passes to "working journalists" -- and these were the only passes that would get you past police lines to cover a story. This was particularly grating to me, since I was a reporter for a college newspaper and I was trying to cover assorted demonstrations that had shut down my school and spilled over into the streets -- but college papers didn't count, as far as they were concerned... We did the best we could with home-made press badges, in the hope that this would give us some protection against having our heads cracked, and perhaps it did work. On the other hand, I don't remember taking the picture I snapped of the head of the Red Squad standing by while a uniformed riot officer clubbed a woman lying on the ground -- I was too busy running away from the police charge, just like everyone else... Anyway -- that experience gave me a strong dislike for any arbitrary attempt to define a "real" journalist. A journalist is as a journalist does -- and, whether you like the story or not, or like Cook or not, his decision to publish was completely in accord with the standards of his profession. --Steve Bellovin
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