I disagree. In my opinion, certain illegal acts (like breaking into certain websites, illegally obtaining documents, etc.) should be legal if done for the purpose of proper journalism. I don't want people going around hacking random websites to prove a point to the sysadmins, but I also don't want journalists to be silenced from exposing incompetencies in critical systems.
Sadly, modern journalism had veered more and more into the territory of activism, much more than it had fifty years ago. The Murdoch media machine is doing its best to accelerate this change of direction, as is the sensationalist new from the US.
With the current course of politics worldwide, extra protections for citizens is not the outcome I expect from abolishing journalistic freedoms. Instead, journalists will be downgraded to the limited and sometimes even oppressive rules citizens have in regard to freedom of information and conduct.
"Just keep your head down" is not a solution, because most people suck at OpSec. The government can and will find you if you release sensitive documents.
> certain illegal acts (like breaking into certain websites, illegally obtaining documents, etc.) should be legal if done for the purpose of proper journalism
This isn't the case in any country and almost certainly should not be.
In some countries, a journalist is generally free to publish anonymously sourced information, regardless of its source (which may have been a hack), and report on that information. Journalists are never allowed to hack websites. Hacking websites isn't legal.
Making some level of allowed-hacker as long as they're labeled a journalist would be crazy, as it would (1) result in the aforementioned semantic debate over who is a journalist, (2) would be the antithesis of privacy to have hackers that are allowed to hack you legally.
I think one of the reasons behind this proposed change is keeping up with changes in what it means to be a journalist.
In the UK, public interest has never been a defence. And given the increasing role that nation states are having in leaking stuff to journalists (even political parties, Labour used documents that were leaked by Russia at their conference in 2019 iirc...ofc, they were totally misleading, which was the point), it is reasonable to ask where the line with espionage actually is.
On 10th July 2011 Rupert Murdock was forced to close his News of the World newspaper due to overwhelming public disgust that they had hacked the answer phone and removed messages from a murdered little girl[1].
Murdock originally tried to use "public interest" to justify that.
I honestly can't see how this would work in practice... It quickly falls into a "who will watch the watchers" kind of situation...
I'm trying to picture how it would work in practice. Say that there are two news organizations, one wildly pro-Trump, one Wildly anti-Trump. It's already clear that they are both biased and ignoring a lot of information. But wouldn't one group still be closer to the truth? How would anyone know which one?
That’s a very good point, and shows one of the limits of my line of thought. Though I don’t think it makes it entirely useless.
Using your example, pro-Trump vs anti-Trump… one would have to wait until Trump is gone as POTUS and see how each news org treats the new POTUS. Maybe this analysis would only work over long periods of time.
The other aspect of all of this that you made me think about is that bias is not necessarily bad.
I am biased towards democracy, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Also, bias against something which is objectively "bad" is not a bad thing.
edit: Maybe the solution here is to embrace bias, and state your biases openly.
Snowden (and others like him) would get a free pass under this system? How would governments keep secrets if any ole person could just share them. I know hilarious/embarrassing secrets from old workplaces and the military. Should I just spill the beans in a blog post? That’s “journalism” …
There’s real human consequences in sharing secrets and the laws somewhat reflect that consequence. Can they be too harsh? yes. We should fight against that if they become too harsh, but I don’t think they should be turned off.
> In my opinion, certain illegal acts (like breaking into certain websites, illegally obtaining documents, etc.) should be legal if done for the purpose of proper journalism.
Who gets to define what constitutes "proper" journalism? You? Me? The government? What you're saying is so far beyond absurd that I can't even really address it.
Sadly, modern journalism had veered more and more into the territory of activism, much more than it had fifty years ago. The Murdoch media machine is doing its best to accelerate this change of direction, as is the sensationalist new from the US.
With the current course of politics worldwide, extra protections for citizens is not the outcome I expect from abolishing journalistic freedoms. Instead, journalists will be downgraded to the limited and sometimes even oppressive rules citizens have in regard to freedom of information and conduct.
"Just keep your head down" is not a solution, because most people suck at OpSec. The government can and will find you if you release sensitive documents.