Self-Styled Journalist?

Self styled journalist

This is a term that is being bandied around recently and all because a man known as Tommy Robinson has dared to call himself a journalist whilst covering the subject of an incident in the north of England which he felt had been been wrongly reported.

He has ended up going to jail for contempt of court but that's not the problem it's the term self styled journalist.

If you look it up, do a Google search, you'll find dozens of media outlets, using the same phrase, even the same sentences time and time again. A perfect example of latter day cut and paste journalism.

The term journalist is, thank god, in no way protected. There is no requirement of any particular qualifications, no need to go to journalism schools.

We recently did a translation of an excellent publication about how the press was suppressed during the 30s by the NSDAP in Germany. One of the clever, back door methods, was to stipulate that a newspaper must have a qualified editor and who could be a qualified editor? You guessed it.

It could only be someone who is a member of "the" party and toed the party line. It was a very, very good way of getting rid of papers and journals that were uncomfortable or weren't necessarily very pro National Socialist.

So the party didn't need necessarily to forbid a news outlet directly. It just couldn't exist any longer because it didn't have a qualified editor.

By the way, the NSDAP was an extreme left wing party. Constantly using it as example of the "Far Right" only portrays ignorance.

You might think what has this really got to do with Tommy Robinson? For many people he is merely a rather rough shod nuisance, a racist, ultra right wing.

But there is more to this and if we start trying to cancel every person we find annoying such as Tommy where do we end up? To many he is absolutely not annoying and not right wing at all.

Who are the right wing? Are they the people trying to cancel him or is he right? It's difficult to tell.

We did a quick analysis today of people who had written articles or opinions on the front page of the Daily Telegraph. Right away, this is not an attempt to put down or belittle any of them in any way. They do a good job, they inform us, sometimes we might feel they are biased but everybody bears a little bias at times. Above all you still have the right to express your opinion.

The question was though "what makes these people qualified and not just self-styled journalists." It is fairly easy to find the writers and their past qualifications either in Wikipedia or Linked-in or various other web-sites.

About three quarters of the writers have a university degree of some sort. From MA up to PHD. But rather few are what one might consider to have been professional journalists with a university training from the outset.

Poppy Wood is an exception. She has a degree in investigative journalism from the university of London. As stated, many have a University background but not necessarily in journalism or even a particularly related subject. Allison Pearson comes to mind. She has qualifications in history, english and french. But journalism? But she does write well researched and qualified articles.

Several did an apprenticeship referred to as an internship at well known publishers.

Several have studied politics but again does that make you a journalist? So it is more than a little arrogant to belittle a man who possibly has the best intentions, even if a judge doesn't think so, and may not have had the background to become a fully fledged from the Westminster bubble accepted - non self-styled - journalist.

One last point on this man. It doesn't matter what one reads about him it invariably starts with "Tommy Robinson whose real name is Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon". It smells as though his opponents want to attempt to prove he is a con-man, a charlatan.

It is perfectly legal to change your name.

You can make it official via deed-poll. The government web-site lists all the requirements for name changes. You are required for instance to change all the necessary documents.

In addition you can also use a "nom de plume" or in English a "pen name". You probably wouldn't consider Charlotte Bronte, who wrote the original Jane Eyre under the name "Currer Bell", her sister Emily - author of Wuthering Heights as "Ellis Bell" - or "Mark Twain" whose name originally was "Samuel Clemens" to be charlatans. In fact all three Bronte sisters wrote originally using male names because at the time publishers didn't believe women would sell well.

You never hear or read "Mark Twain" author of "Huckleberry Finn" whose real name was "Samuel Clemens".

So maybe in the interest of fairness it would be better not to state that he really has another name and in the interest of real journalism maybe better not to cut and paste the phrase because one has nothing better to say.