Shadow Culture Secretary Ivan Lewis will today propose a policy that demands journalists to be part of a register. If you are kicked off this register and blacklisted, you will not be allowed to be a journalist.
As BoingBoing point out:
Given that “journalism” presently encompasses “publishing accounts of things you’ve seen using the Internet” and “taking pictures of stuff and tweeting them” and “blogging” and “commenting on news stories,” this proposal is even more insane than the tradition “journalist licenses” practiced in totalitarian nations.
The government, a governmental body or a regulator, should not have the power to remove someone’s right to practice.
Johann Hari proved that the free market already punishes irresponsibility. And it should only be the free market which has that right. The market, after all, is a far better judge of ‘malpractice’ than the government is.
