Trying To Define ‘Journalist’ Risks Making Free Press Less Free

Commentary
Inside the First Amendment

By Gene Policinski
First Amendment Center vice president/executive director

Who is a journalist?

Seems a simple question, really. But try to put the answer to paper or computer screen, and more pointedly, try to write that definition into law, and suddenly the effort gets more complicated — as do the First Amendment implications for a free press.

The answer is at issue these days because of proposals in Congress that…