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Should someone that gives you advice about which cough syrup they use be allowed to prescribe drugs? No, that doesn't make any sense. That person isn't a doctor, and they haven't gone to medical school.

So why should a "citizen journalist" be allowed to get press credentials to cover Congressional hearings?

In short, they shouldn't. In the first place, a citizen journalist, by nature, reports on things that they come into contact with through their normal, daily lives. Do you live next door to Congress? No? Do you hang out with a lot of Senators? No? Do you send SMS messages to the Ways and Means Committee? No again?

Citizen journalists and bloggers are a different BREED of journalist. The reason they exist is, theoretically anyhow, to fill a void left by traditional journalism. They write rapid fire articles, sometimes post several times a day, and usually write the way normal people talk. They lack the pretense and hoity-toity grammar of some mainstream journalists.

They are everyday people, people like you and me. They are not traditional journalists, though, and therefore don't deserve credentials that are reserved for traditional journalists. They're for people that have written extensively in a professional workplace. They're for people that have worked with editors and deadlines. They're for people that know the protocols associated with press credentials and follow them.

I don't know squat about press credentials, but I do know that I have to right asking for them since I'm not a reporter. I'm a guy who likes to blog. I don't choose to go to school to learn about that stuff, so I don't get to have the credentials that can be earned that way. I'm not sad about it, that's the way things are.

Shouting "Free speech! Freedom of the press!" doesn't cut it, Jack. Of course you have the right to speak freely. And you have the right to go to journalism school. And you have the right to get a job at a newspaper. And you have the right to work hard until you finally get to cover congress.

And should we even discuss how much it would cost the government to screen all the tens of thousands of bloggers that want access to Capitol Hill? The extra security guards that would be required? The infrastructure to figure out how to hand out the credentials?

That's millions of dollars, easily! Are you willing to pay more taxes for that? Should we cut programs to the poor for that? National health care? Forget that, we need bloggers in Senate!

I can't spend $4 a gallon on gas, I need to make sure governmentconspiracies.org's blogger can get into the House of Representatives! Raise my taxes, please!

Really, we need to do what we do, and do it the best we can. I'm a blogger. I blog, at home, about things I know and see every day. I don't think that I deserve to be allowed into Congress so I can blog about that, too.

Learn more about this author, Lee Mathews.
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