Like all great historical ideas, the project of licensing journalists so that they may benefit from the First Amendment was born in a very modest place. In fact, it began in the most modest of all places: the brain of Dianne Feinstein, U.S. senator from California.
The new law, which was just adopted by Congress and signed by the president, has a short, but interesting history.
It started when Sen. Feinstein objected to nonjournalists being covered by a federal shield for journalists who publish leaked information. “I am not going to accept that anybody can repeat what a whistle-blower leaks,” she successfully argued. “I am just not going to give an easy whistle-blow job to any traitor who wants one.”
A confidential source from the NSA declared to The Martian: “It is not for nothing that Sen. Feinstein chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.” Asked why he or she did not want to be identified, our source explained: “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in Russia.”
“If any citizen can call himself, herself, or itself a journalist and say anything he wants,” said Feinstein with her well-known sense of humor, “then I am Thomas Jefferson and a Founding Mother.”
In her successful push, Feinstein reached across the floor and built a bipartisan coalition. “Money,” she declared, “is everything. This is why I want to make sure that unpaid bloggers are not considered journalists.”
“After all,” she explained to your correspondent, “I myself get a monthly check just to open my mouth. Why shouldn’t everybody have the same benefit?”
Under the new law that evolved from Sen. Feinstein’s original idea, any “act of journalism” will have to be accomplished under the aegis of an accredited media organization in order to benefit from the protection of the First Amendment. Others will be raided by the Department of Education SWAT team.
The Martian will, of course, be shielded by the new law (even if many of the paper’s employees think they are underpaid). As part of the normal vetting process, the publisher of The Martian is preparing to complete the 24-page licensing form, recite an oath of allegiance to the Central and Indivisible Republic, and streak around the block three times.
One interesting detail to note: Regulations require that the block mentioned above be at the Federal Trade Commission building, probably because of the Michael Lantz statue. Most of the congressmen interviewed by The Martian agreed that the state must control free speech as efficiently as it controls commerce, monetary policy, and the business cycle.
Questioned about the complex process required to regulate journalism, Mr. Cash Sustain, the White House regulation tsar, argued that such regulations are “necessary to correct market failures.”
“These are just common-sense regulations,” Sen. Feinstein repeated at a recent $10,000-a-plate fundraiser. “It’s similar to gun control: We can’t have any American just doing whatever he wants.”
— Prr Lzkdrqxcwm, the Martian
