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Journalist is not loosely defined. FTA:

>While we recognize the importance and the rights of the private citizen who snaps a photo or video of an arrest, this site will only cover individuals who self-identify as journalists and have some track record of journalistic work.

Splitting hairs over the semantics of the word 'journalistic' is an attempt to discredit the study about authoritarianism being at an all time high in the U.S.

You have only to look at the numerous comorbid attempts to throw out broad swaths of democratically placed votes to see that it's not about "but are they a true journalist?"

If you take a picture of something happening on your street and write a blog post about it, you are not a journalist. If you wouldn't be granted press credentials for something, you're probably not a journalist. If it's a side gig you don't intend to make a living doing, you're very likely not a journalist.

There are plenty of instances where someone can fit into the article's definition of "journalist" where they probably shouldn't.

Would you say people aren't software developers unless they are employed by a company to predominately develop software? Because your comment certainly reads like that type of gatekeeping regarding who is and is not a journalist.

> Would you say people aren't software developers unless they are employed by a company to predominately develop software?

Yes, without question. It's tautological.

what about unemployed/retired software developers, and open source contributors?

Doesn't the fact that you had to use different language to communicate their status lead into their point?

no, it questions it

It would perhaps be tautological if the OP had qualified professional software developers, but the tautological definition for "software developer" is "anyone who develops software (irrespective of whether they do it professionally)". If we're going to pick nits, we may as well be accurate, right?

Which was exactly my point. They are limiting the title of "journalist" to exclusively people who have been anointed as journalists by some gatekeeping entity. This rules out hobbyist, freelancers, self employed people, people just breaking into the industry, and all sorts of other people. The software developing equivalents of those people are inarguably part of the software development community. Why wouldn't their counterparts in another industry be considered journalists?

If you don't rule out hobbyists, freelancers, and the self-employed, I can declare myself a journalist, start a blog or a Twitter, and start throwing Molotov cocktails, and if I get arrested for it, that's another arrest of a journalist.

And as a Molotov-cocktail-throwing opponent of the regime, I want to raise the number of arrests of journalists, because that makes the regime look bad, as shown by this thread. Even if every single arrest is of someone like me - a left-radical with a Twitter account, not Walter Cronkite or whoever - it's unlikely that anyone will bother to check, and even more unlikely that, if anyone bothers to check, very many other people will hear about it.

Where is this trope of Molotov throwing journalists coming from? I have seen it multiple times in this thread and it is just bizarre. No one would consider someone throwing a Molotov a journalist, no one would count such an arrest as the arrest of a journalist, and no one would consider the arrest an attack on press freedom.

The fact that arrests of journalists are being tracked implies that some gatekeeping about who is a journalist is necessary. The clearer the definition is, the more meaningful the statistics will be. That is the only way we would actually be able track whether journalists are being targeted by police.

There is a difference between defining a category of people and gatekeeping a category of people.

What's the difference?

The dictionary definitions of the two might be similar, but there is a big difference in connotation and modern usage.

I would say the focus is on opposite sides of the spectrum. When you are defining a group, the primary focus is on who should be included. The focus of gatekeeping is on the people who should be excluded. This is usually done in order to raise the status of those who are included or those who are setting the rules for inclusion. Those rules are often arbitrary or draconian and are usually set by some central authority (or someone who feels they have such authority). This authority will then be the one who doles out permission for others to participate.

That is where the software developer example comes in. Anyone can join the open source software development community and they will only be judged on the merit of their contribution. They might have never contributed to any OSS. They might have never been paid to develop software. They might have no formal education in software development. None of that would matter if we are defining people based on the merit of their work. However they would likely be excluded in a system that relies on gatekeeping.

A definition of journalists that excludes small scale bloggers, and such would create a different population from say, one that comprised "anyone who self identifies as a journalist", for instance.

> The fact that arrests of journalists are being tracked implies that some gatekeeping about who is a journalist is necessary.

Not really. Just track the statistics for full-time journalists. Then you don't have to engage in gatekeeping of journalism, you're just sensibly excluding full-time bounty hunters who wrote a news article that one time from the statistics on arrests of full-time journalists, even if the bounty hunter was, in that one instance, a journalist.

I admittedly haven't read the article yet (I'll carry the shame until my dying day, etc), but does it take into account that we've had a lot more unrest than usual this year? Even without an uptick in authoritarianism, I would expect more journalists to be arrested in a year with lots of riots and protests against the police than in a calm year. Specifically, you have record numbers of journalists working in close proximity to police officers who (warranted or not) are working long hours with people shouting in their faces (let's say, "conditions for which they're inadequately trained").

Maybe you'll argue that it's authoritarianism either way, and maybe you're technically right, but a top-down directive to arrest journalists sounds a lot different (and scarier) than the situation I described above.

> I admittedly haven't read the article yet (...), but does it take into account that we've had a lot more unrest than usual this year?

If you have more unrest than usual (and it shouldn't be usual at all to have unrest) it's even more important to have more journalists circulating freely and writing/publishing freely: that's how you get to see and understand what's actually going on.

If you don't have journalists doing their job freely, you only have the state propaganda to listen to.

No one is arguing that journalists are unimportant, only that an increase in journalist arrests could be a really scary thing like authoritarianism or it could be that they just had a lot more contact with crankier cops.

Oh yeah I agree with that, I was just arguing that especially because the US had more unrest it makes even more problematic that journalists got arrested.

That's a symptom of the fact that the establishment does not want the press to document what it's doing, to the point that it's arresting journalists.

> That's a symptom of the fact that the establishment does not want the press to document what it's doing, to the point that it's arresting journalists.

... or it's the other thing: more journalists in closer contact with crankier cops. Or maybe even some combination of the two. This is my point--we can't draw conclusions from an observed spike in arrests.

Is it a symptom of that, or is it a symptom of the fact that it's much easier for the sorts of people who'd go to protests and do things that get them arrested anyway to call themselves journalists?

> If you wouldn't be granted press credentials for something, you're probably not a journalist.

But if you would, you might still not be. I once got press credentials (and a steep press discount to an event) because I wrote for a group blog and knew a guy.

> If you take a picture of something happening on your street and write a blog post about it, you are not a journalist.

Yes, you are, and should be protected.

> If you wouldn't be granted press credentials for something, you're probably not a journalist.

This is a horrific definition. Being a journalist can't be defined by the willingness of the subjects to be covered. That's stenography.

> If it's a side gig you don't intend to make a living doing, you're very likely not a journalist.

So belief in anything is evidence that you aren't a journalist. Journalists are defined by their income.

>> If you take a picture of something happening on your street and write a blog post about it, you are not a journalist.

> Yes, you are, and should be protected.

Protected from what? Being arrested for recording a public event, surely. Being arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail, surely not.

So the crucial distinction is what are these journalists being arrested for, and also do we have a surge of people who are trying to cover their own knowing illegal behavior by wearing a PRESS badge.

With the collapse of local newspapers -- and what local newspapers remain often eschew investigative reporting due to lack of resources or unwillingness to alienate patrons -- there are many places where someone maintaining a local news blog as a side gig is the important local press. These people definitely deserve to be seen as "real journalists".

> Splitting hairs over the semantics of the word 'journalistic' is an attempt to discredit the study about authoritarianism being at an all time high in the U.S.

Those two things are not the same, and in many ways aren't even connected within the context of this article.

1. The article's definition of journalist would allow me to claim that I'm a journalist. I would never consider myself as such, nor would any reasonable person, yet my photography has adorned the covers of published books, my writing has been published on respected news sites, and I've been invited as a speaker to conferences as an authority on a variety of subject matters.

"Some track record of journalistic work" is a very low bar, depending on the meaning of "journalistic work" and "some track record".

"self-identifying as a journalist" is an even lower bar.

2. If you'd read the article, they even assert that half the incidents reported occurred to people not associated to any known or major media organizations and presumed to be freelancers.

So, I don't think it's just "splitting hairs", the definition is central to the validity of their methodology. Is there a problem with growing authoritarianism in the US? In my opinion, yes, unequivocally. I've been discussing this matter in my circles for more than a decade. The revelations from Snowden, the work the CATO Institute/Radley Balko did on police militarization and brutality, no-knock warrants, asset forfeiture, etc. are all strong evidence of a persistent and growing authoritarian trend in the US. That may or may not validate the evidence in the article, but the way the article states it's evidence and methodology comes very much down to semantics about what it means to be a "journalist", and that is not a decided question in 2020. One can recognize and acknowledge growing authoritarianism in the US while at the same time pointing out flaws in the article and it's associated study methodology.

I think it is not in good faith to try to tar people who bring up good questions about definition as "splitting hairs", or being pro-authoritarian, or in other ways trying to straw man their position. You can be anti-authoritarian, be against police brutality and the suppression of the press, have observed with your own eyes credentialed reporters being harmed and assaulted by the police in 2020, and still want to know with some specificity what this study considers to be a "journalist" for the purpose of reporting their stats.

> but we've also seen a lot of "journalists" throwing rocks and molotov cocktails on live stream and doing other criminal acts.

I'd like to see some evidence of that happening on scale. If there is no such evidence, I think, perhaps, your comment proves the parent's point.

Is 117 arrests “at scale”? Cause that’s what we’re talking about. Normalize that for riot conditions and it just seems likely a journalist is more likely to get hit by lightening than be arrested. Please don’t do the math on that, elaborating for emphasis.

An arrest is merely an attestation, not proof. Police will charge you for anything they want, they don't have to justify it unless you contest it.

Even "as scale" (whatever that means) arrests can't really be meaningful in this context. If the contention is that police are unjustly targeting journalists, arrests are one tool they can unilaterally employee. It would be interesting to see rates of arrest vs. charges files vs. convictions I suppose.

Would the same logic apply for unrest in Hong Kong and Belarus? "Ah, it's just the riots causing authorities to arrest journalists, literally nothing to see (or read) here!" :P

Yes, 117 arrests is a lot.

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo

he has hundreds(?) of examples if you scroll, but to save some time here's one from portland police

https://twitter.com/PortlandPolice/status/128725192442150502...

Edit: ok searching "press" on the feed maybe like more like tens rather than hundreds with actual video evidence, but im sure i missed some

Wow, downvoted hard just for bringing this information to light. This forum is going downhill and its not because of an "authoritarian" trend in this thread.

So in looking at the first link. I had a hard time finding a single example of anyone pretending to be a journalist, except maybe the owner of the twitter account. What I did find were hundreds of videos of random people getting in fights, the owner of the account talking about the fights he had also engaged in, and a lot of claims about people being part of a secret underground antifi something or other. In reality not one of the videos seemed to be depicting anyone supporting or proclaiming that they themselves were antifi (though I’m sure there are a few somewhere in there) but most especially there was no video of evidence of any of the “secret” antifi activity that the owner of the account seems to be selling in his upcoming book.

As for the second post. It is indeed a person wearing a shirt that says press on it who is not a journalist. However, the given reason was “so he would not be shot by feds” which to me highlights the spirt of this conversation, that there is growing concern as well as some evidence that the country has sifted toward a more authoritarian bent.

Edit: I forgot to mention that there were no rocks or molotovs being thrown in any of the videos I saw, which there were reportedly hundreds of.

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1327774883002998784?s=2...

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1298145371009380352?s=2...

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1296075594896039937?s=2...

https://www.foxnews.com/us/portland-protest-press-throwing-o...

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1296610943514812418?s=2...

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1300690653714591744?s=2...

https://www.portlandoregon.gov/police/news/read.cfm?id=26109...

From above police report link:

"Portland Fire & Rescue treated two Portland Police members injured by rocks thrown by individuals in the crowd. Both of them went to the hospital for further treatment. One of the rocks (pictured) weighed 9.5 pounds and was thrown by a person in group of people wearing "press" as the officer prepared to ride away on a truck. "

"At about 12:36 a.m., Portland Police began moving the crowd to the west as before. This went on for about twenty minutes. Police made more arrests. During this time people in the crowd mingled with those with "press" written on their outer garments as cover and threw rocks and bottles at police. People with "press" written on their outer garments also threw objects at police. Somebody threw a rock, which broke a window in the vehicle giving public address announcements. Others pelted the same vehicle with rocks causing dents. Other vehicles were dented by thrown objects. At least one car parked along a street had windows broken out when a rock or rocks thrown at police, missed them and struck the car windows. "

Police have people hurling the most vial insults imaginable, for hours. As well as having to endure physical assaults.

This is going to cause some serious psychological damage down the road. No one takes that kind of abuse and comes away unchanged.

The fact that at no point did police simply open fire in mass. Well that is truly impressive.

> The fact that at no point did police simply open fire in mass. Well that is truly impressive.

You think that it's "impressive" (?!) that the police, while working, did _not_ commit mass murder in response to being called names?

What hideous third-world country do you live in? And while many people see the police as degenerates, your description and expectations of them are about as low as a human being could go.

For all the claims and all the links posted, the only crimes I actually saw on video were police assaulting nonviolent people who were acting as press and wearing clothing labeled press. Not really the slam dunk evidence that there are tons of "fake press".

It's true that there was one police report you linked mentioning people labeled "press" attacking officers, and Andy Ngo himself claimed that this is happening. Everything else is just recycling of those claims (e.g. Andy Ngo retweets that Fox News reports that Andy Ngo says fake press are attacking the police).

If this really is happening all the time, I would expect it would be easy to find video evidence of it happening repeatedly, as we do find for other activities that definitely are happening all the time, like police brutality against protestors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95GCraUPiGE.

Andy Ngo is known to use selective editing and openly lies about facts, and is not a valid source on anything\

A single instance of a protestor who falsely claimed to be press, and did not commit any crimes does not prove that people who claim to be journalists are throwing rocks or molotov cocktails.

hmm, well sure seems like he's struck a nerve with those types nevertheless

> I don't see a pro-authoritarian bent in the comments in this thread. What I see a lot of is people pointing out that the definition of "journalist" is very very loose in 2020, and that has an effect on the arrest stats.

This itself is an authoritarian tendency that is increasingly alarming me lately (a feeling that started after 9/11.) I think we're going to see "journalist" becoming a licensed profession within the next 20 years, which is a commonality amongst all authoritarian dictatorships. When people start talking about who is or isn't a journalist, and identifying ideological opponents as not journalists, the only outcome is a media that is defined as legitimate by how loyal it is.

Citizens United is a great case to read in this context.

Only approved organizations could publish on the election after a certain date.

We are soaking the propaganda and we don’t know it.

BRCA which citizens united partially struck down had no approved organization list, and no ban on publishing

> identifying ideological opponents as not journalists

The trend that I'm more worried about is identifying journalists as ideological opponents. Or even as "enemies of the people".

> When people start talking about who is or isn't a journalist, and identifying ideological opponents as not journalists, the only outcome is a media that is defined as legitimate by how loyal it is.

What is it about so many of the commenters in this thread that they're allergic to good faith objectivity? When you write a study for publication, or arguably when you report about a study, one of the things you're responsible for doing is to define any terms which may otherwise be ambiguous for their usage within the context of the study. Defining what this one study / article means by the word "journalist" is not the same thing as gatekeeping, and it certainly isn't some slippery slope of demanding that journalism be a licensed profession. I haven't seen a single comment advocating for that. What I am consistently seeing is several people asking "For the purposes of this study, what qualifies as a "journalist"." Which is a very fair question and deserving of a good faith response.

I haven’t seen anyone alleging to be a journalist throwing rocks and molotov cocktails. Can you verify this? If this is something we’ve all seen a lot of, then somehow I missed it.

> but we've also seen a lot of "journalists" throwing rocks and molotov cocktails on live stream and doing other criminal acts.

Have we ? Would you like to point out more than 0 ? Since it's "a lot".

This may dovetail into some of Ben Thompson's stratechery posts into what actually is journalism in this day and age of zero friction and marginal costs to publish/disseminate information...the traditional definitions themselves are changing

You hit the nail on the head.

If it's someone who has a shred of journalistic integrity, simply observing, recording and/or interviews regardless of their political stance, then I'm absolutely against their arrest. While I'm also against cherry picking journalism, oh well, they cant be targeted either.

If you're in one hand with a camera and the other hand a rock or molotov cocktail, you're not a journalist. Too many folks are claiming to be journalists when they're not and for me, that ain't right. This leads to governments being allowed to be authoritarian with, sadly, very good reason that will convince mass populations to vote against the freedom of the press.

How these two types of individuals are being confused, that's beyond me. Again, I think we should all just go back to being hunter gatherers and fight bears for blueberries at this rate.

> we've also seen a lot of "journalists" throwing rocks and molotov cocktails on live stream and doing other criminal acts

Ive watched a lot of livestreams of the protest and never once saw a livestreamer throw a rock or molotov cocktail

The livestreamers with sufficient common sense aren't going to do that and leave the most blatant evidence in the world lying around for their inevitable conviction. It's a bit harder (though not impossible) to hide that on a stream where you don't get to selectively edit.