Licensing journalists will restrict free speech

TO ITS credit, the Golding administration quickly silenced voices from among its parliamentary group calling for the licensing of journalists in late 2009. In that year, there were also sounds from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat about a regional licensing regime. They were put to rest - following objection from the Association of Caribbean Media workers and press associations across the region - by a statement from then CARICOM Secretary General Edwin Carrington dismissing the report as erroneous.

But the issue of licensing journalists is still moot here and abroad. The call for licensing journalists gets louder when there is the absence of an effective self-regulatory framework by the media, and where there is a pushback from legislators who are being pressed by the media for more freedoms.

Proponents of this view point to the application of licensing regimes for comparable professional groups. According to a November 2010 report by the Washington, DC-based Centre for International Media Assistance (CIMA), "Licensing exists in democracies that consider journalism to be a profession on the level of doctors and lawyers."

Another basis for the call to license journalists across the world is the view - held mainly by journalists - that there is an urgent need to shut out pretenders and pseudojournalists from entering the profession. This, journalists believe, will help to maintain or raise standards as well as protect compensation levels. CIMA reports that licensing "retains a place in many Latin nations, where journalists themselves fight for laws that keep their profession strong and exclusive, enhancing their bargaining power against publishers".

Inadequate arguments

Other journalists want licensing to be done by their professional associations - not by the State. The following March 4, 2007 extract from the online news website, 'Cleveland's Voice for Social Justice', is instructive: "The Society of Professional Journalists must start licensing journalists or the government will start doing it for them. We need to start taking this practice seriously and separate the real journalists from the fakes ... ."

However, all of these arguments are inadequate and unconvincing to justify licensing journalists. In the first place, as ruled by the Inter-American Human Rights Court in 1985, such a measure would violate Article 13 - freedom of expression - of the American Convention on Human Rights. The court ruled that a Costa Rican journalist-licensing law infringed the American Convention on Human Rights "in so far as it denied some persons access to the full use of the news media as a means of expressing themselves or imparting information". The ruling is in accordance with similar conventions as well as national constitutions - including Jamaica's - that protect the right of freedom of expression.

Furthermore, in 1980, the MacBride Commission concluded in its report to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation that: "Licensing schemes might well lead to restrictive regulations governing the conduct of journalists; in effect, protection would be granted only to those journalists who had earned official approval."

Licensing illegal

So licensing journalists in Jamaica and many other jurisdictions is plainly illegal, because freedom of expression is a constitutionally protected right. This underscores the difference between journalists and other professional/occupational groups who are not exercising a constitutional right.

If not licensing, can the registration of journalists address the concerns for accountability, standards and professionalism? Views differ on this. Proponents of registration say this should be done ONLY by journalist associations - not government - and that compliance should be voluntary. As stated in the Chapultepec Declaration adopted by the Hemisphere Conference on Free Speech, Mexico City, on March 11, 1994:

"The membership of journalists in guilds, their affiliation to professional and trade associations, and the affiliation of the media with business groups must be strictly voluntary."

This is pretty much what obtains at the Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ). Membership in the association is voluntary, and it has opened its events/programmes - forums, awards, training, scholarships - to non-members, as well as advocated policy decisions on behalf of all media practitioners. But the PAJ, along with the Media Association Jamaica Limited, must take the further step to activate the code of practice for journalists within individual media entities. The absence of an industrywide code would be one strike against the argument for licensing journalists.

Byron Buckley is associate editor - special projects. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and byron.buckley@gleanerjm.com.