Why democracies need a Functional Definition of Journalism now more than ever

Abstract

What is journalism? Although some democracies continue to recognize a special status for professional journalists, a clear definition of what constitutes journalistic activity remains elusive. This is a practical problem, both because the boundary-blurring effect of an evolving news ecosystem moves the literal meaning of the word ever-further from intuitive recognition, and because the notion of a free press demands that courts protect specific practices. Five proposed activity descriptors are combined to propose a parsimonious definition: “Journalism comprises the activities involved in an independent pursuit of accurate information about current or recent events and its original presentation for public edification.” This is termed a “functional” definition to distinguish it from both normative evaluation and from “class” definitions for practitioners.

KEYWORDS:

• accuracy
• definition
• independence
• journalism
• originality
• professional identity

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author acknowledges substantial advice from Jamie Cameron (Osgoode Hall Law School, York University), who is his partner in a joint research project to formulate a proposed legal definition of journalism for common law jurisprudence.

Notes

1. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “functional” as: “of or having a special activity, purpose, or task … relating to the way in which something works or operates.” A synonym might be “operational,” but that term contains no less potential for misunderstanding.

2. The list of Zelizer's headings has been slightly reordered for the purpose of the sentence that follows it. A good example of a “text” definition is: “[A]ny authored text in written, audio or visual form, which claims to be … a truthful statement about, or record of, some hitherto unknown new feature of the actual, social world” (McNair 1998, 4, cited by Zelizer 2004, 22).

3. Translated from the French by the author.