[Foundation-l] Wikinews is giving out press credentials

Fri Nov 11 18:55:45 UTC 2005

Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:

> If you want to issue press credentials there are strict steps to 
> follow, and they have nothing to do with trademark law or whatever : 
> they depend on national press legislations. Press organizations have 
> special privileges related to press, but they also have special 
> obligations to fulfill, and special liabilities !

So an organization cannot, without permission of government-sanctioned 
bodies, send people to observe and report on events?  We're not talking 
about official government press passes here (the U.S. analog is 
state-issued passes), simply a piece of paper that indicates the person 
in question has the sanction of Wikinews to report on their behalf.  
People are free to ignore that piece of paper of course, and demand 
something government-issued, but are you saying that the mere act of 
issuing that piece of paper is illegal, even if it is not represented as 
an official government-sanctioned press pass?

I know in the U.S. at least this is perfect legal, and any attempt to 
/require/ press credentials be granted through a government agency would 
be explicitly unconstitutional (violating the First Amendment).  A 
particular event can of course specify that they only accept 
state-issued press credentials for entry of journalists, or impose even 
more stringent requirements (White House press briefings require their 
own approval process), but that's a separate matter---nobody is 
expecting that Wikinewsies will be allowed in /everywhere/ that other 
journalists are, at least not in the near future.

-Mark