By Joel Thurtell
Republicans never cease to amaze me.
You think they’re all in the pockets of business and industry, and then out of the blue some GOP hack shows a streak of brilliance.
So it is with Michigan Senator Bruce Patterson and his plan for reforming journalism.
Journalists are pillorying Patterson for proposing that they be licensed.
The wails from practicing journalists have been loud and long. We hear that our sacred First Amendment right to free speech is under attack. This — supposedly — wrongheaded Republican politician is threatening the very fabric of our Union. We hear that a licensed press is a controlled press. Bruce Patterson, so we are told, is fitting American journalism, or at least Michigan journalism, for a great big muzzle.
The senator most likely foresaw all this righteous huffing and puffing and knew the journies would play right into his hands. True to form, they see only the threat to their own interests and are blind to the broad and really stupendous purpose of Patterson’s proposal.
Licensing of journalists is only the tip of a big fat wedge with an entirely different goal — that of transforming the world economy.
The aim of Senator Patterson’s bill has little to do with journalism, other than using it as a red herring to distract all of us and most importantly the journalists from his real goal.
It is sheer genius.
Reminds me of Nixon’s trip to China. After years of Republicans bashing the People’s Republic of China, a Republican president opens the door.
What Senator Patterson proposes is truly awesome.
It is nothing short of a government stimulus package with another name. Government spending is, of course, something that Republicans typically abhor.
Yet here is the good senator, a Republican, with a full employment plan for journalists.
Who is going to license the journalists?
There is a job for someone in that.
Jobs, jobs, jobs.
Patterson proposes a state board that would register journalists, and registration would be voluntary.
Jobs, jobs, jobs.
That’s not enough. Senator Patterson must be persuaded to modify his bill to make licensing mandatory, as it is now for lawyers, doctors and hairdressers.
Fair is fair.
More jobs, jobs, jobs.
Besides, mandatory licensing is the only way to go, from an economic standpoint. The only way this plan will make money is if it’s forced down people’s throats.
Who will do that?
We will need a whole new government bureau.
Jobs!
There will first of all have to be tests.
Prospective journalists will have to pass comprehensive examinations before they can be licensed to practice journalism.
More jobs!
There will have to be professional people who devise the tests.
Did I mention jobs?
Senator Patterson wants journalists to have “good moral character.” This is a toughie. Finding journalists with “good moral character” may not be easy.
How is “good moral character” to be determined? Background checks, that’s how. Who does them?
Jobs!
Lots of interviews with relatives, friends, employers, co-workers as a starter. And then, what do we mean by “good moral character”? There will have to be committees to work on that.
See what I mean by full employment?
There will have to be professional people to administer the tests.
There will have to be professional people to issue the licenses.
There will have to be an enforcement branch to prosecute those — like me — who keep practicing journalism without a license.
Who better to perform these functions than journalists themselves?
Despite the massive decline in newspapers, television and radio, our universities’ journalism schools keep cranking out bachelor degrees in journalism. The Patterson bill — with a few tweaks — would provide jobs for these newbie journalists.
Many veteran journalists have been sacked due to the collapse of their industry. Senator Patterson is offering new hope to unemployed journalists. Apply for a job in testing, administering, conferring of journalism licenses. Or if maybe you are a laid-off investigative journalist, get a job in the enforcement bureau hunting down those fellow creatures who refuse to be licensed, yet continue to commit acts of journalism.
I foresee a whole raft of indictments, as independent-minded journalists refuse to take the tests. Very well, raid their offices, seize their computers. If they have no office and work from home, all the easier — get a search warrant and ransack their bedrooms or wherever they illegally ply their writing trade. We will need more lawyers and ancillary staff to prosecute the miscreants.
There is no end to journalistic employment here.
There could be enormous fees generated from licensing, and those who refuse could be hit with massive fines that would help swell the state’s dwindling treasury and pay for press regulation.
Jobs, jobs, jobs and unending revenue are the twin credos of the Patterson journalism licensing program.
Why can’t journalists see the good in this plan?
With licensing, there will have to be censorship. In this area, the true genius of Senator Patterson’s bill shines through. In the United States, we have historically considered censorship to be a bad thing. Culturally, we are against censorship. But in many ways, censorship is already practiced at every level of journalism. It is just that right now, the journalists are in control. They are the gatekeepers who decide what shall be printed and what shall not. Censorship is alive and well in American journalism, and so converting that penchant for suppressing others’ ideas to a positive bent will be easy. Salaries will do the job. Cultural change can be bought.
China shows the way. China has turned censorship into a growth industry. Jobs, jobs, jobs.
Censorship, to be fair, will have to fall on all published reports. This means massive numbers of eyes reading, reading, excising, excising.
But America is democratic. If we are going to license our journalists, we will have to censor them in an open and democratic way, not behind closed newsroom doors as is the case today.
There will have to be an Open Editing Act to assure that all editorial decisions are deliberated and arrived at in a public forum.
There will have to be a Freedom of Editing Act which will give the public open access to reporting and editing records, so that all editorial decisions can be tracked.
All of this will require huge staffs, multiple bureaus, divisions and at the federal level maybe even a cabinet-level post — Secretary of Press Morality.
Most of all, it means stupendous expenditures of money, and that will generate millions of jobs. J schools won’t be able to print diplomas fast enough to meet demand.
We will need band-new diploma mills — jobs for hack professors!
It will cost billions. Carried out nationally, it will cost trillions.
It will recreate the entire American economy and help re-float the world economy
To think that this marvelous project was dreamed up by a Republican!
A Michigan Republican, too.
Wow!
I propose that we call this bill the Senator Bruce Patterson Journalism Stimulus Act of 2010.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com
