[Nasrudith]

I hope you really didn't think that through. Because you just suggested that journalists should not exist when outlawed then.

If they are completely subservient to the law then they should not break it even when it is wrong. Therefore it is justified to do violence against them.

Goddamn right journalists should be above the law! The truth is fundamentally above the law as nothing written as law can change the truth. The nation-states running travesties and making reporting on them state secrets that is even more reason to report on them.

Fuck treating nation-states and laws as sacred. Any student of 20th century history (really before) should know why doing so is a dangerous, stupid, and /evil/ idea.

[luckylion]

> Goddamn right journalists should be above the law!

In very select instances, and under certain circumstances. A corrupt journalist is terrible and shouldn't be above the law at all. Granted you could argue that he's not a journalist if he doesn't adhere to journalistic standards, but that just makes it a battle over "is this person a journalist?"

[LoSboccacc]

> "is this person a journalist?"

the proper angle would be "was the presented data believed true at the moment of reporting" - even if this leave the door open for manipulation by omission, it can't really be more stringent than that without becoming dangerous.

[superqwert]

"Goddamn right journalists should be above the law!" - so the Monarchy should not be above the law (Magna Carta), but journalists should?

The last people I would want to have additional privileges are journalists, who often love to create spin or ruin people's lives for a story.

[Nasrudith]

The point of being above the law isn't about legal standards - power corrupts and the nominal protection without anything to back it is meaningless.

The only literal solution to that would be a daft concept of a nation-state of journalists with nuclear arms to give diplomatic immunity. Technically possible but a throughly daft idea that would create its own nation-state to corrupt.

Journalist legal immunity would be problematic in how it is defined as it could be used as a cudgel to restrict it to those who "play ball".

I suspect that an affirmative defense being recognized would probably be the best. So "broke into the Pentagon and published information on blacksites" would be protected but not "got drunk, beat spouse, then hit someone with your car". Even that is flawed as the judge could discard it or it could be given to cronies - plus again not an absolute defense against malfeasance. Said ideals are in short supply. Journalists would ideally be ethereal immortals - unable to be caged, killed, or silenced but we don't live in such a place.

The point for now is to see what was shown, ignore the "but that is illegal" and pay attention to the truth to use it to guide your decisions in a complicated world.