But I felt bad for the panel: the system is stacked against them.  

How?  Well, to help those of you outside the beltway understand, let me give you a quick lesson on the ways of Washington.

It's like high school.  Who you are depends on who talks to you and who will sit with you in the cafeteria (unless, of course, you're too cool to even be seen in the cafeteria!).

Remember?  Then take a look at this picture:

This is a photo of a "table tent" in the rather large, first floor cafeteria in the Brookings Institution Building by Washington's famous Dupont Circle.  I happened to be doing some work across the street, and heard the cafeteria was a good spot to grab a quick lunch.

Though I've eaten there a handful of times now, I've never seen the cafeteria full.  There is a large back room - the part not reserved for Brookings's "cool kids" - that gets busy on some days, but it is never full.  The area with the table tents is often practically empty, even during the noon rush.

That's Washington.  But let me break it down a little further:

Animals on the African savannah know when it's safe to approach the watering hole.  They honor the hierarchy, and know how to tell a hungry lion from a resting one.  DC is the same kind of jungle; the table tents at the Brooking cafeteria are simply a clue to the separation of lower and higher Washington animals.

Someone at Brookings decided to create that special section to create a dividing line between those who are in the club and those who are not.  Insiders get to feel included.  On the other hand, people who become suddenly aware that they are not just dining, but are excluded from sitting with those of an upper caste, learn a useful lesson about the wonderful world of Washington.  

Washington is concentric circles, concentric club levels, and anyone's value, identity and career prospects rely on the ability to get from an outer ring to the next most inner.  Journalists aren't immune to the pull of this caste system--they want to sit at the reserved tables, too.

Washington D. C., you might say, is high school on steroids.  And no one is satisfied being an outsider.

But one more thing: in Washington, the center circle - the über circle - is the White House.

The "Who Is A Journalist?" forum was held is an impressive room on the top floor of a piece of prime downtown D. C. real estate just a couple of blocks from the White House.  The ceilings are quite high.  As the second person to arrive - after only my ePluribus Media counterpart (we "citizen journalists" are early-birds) - I was able to photograph it before it filled.

My picture does not give a true sense of the scale of the room.  That's a no ceiling you see in the foreground, but the ceiling of the foyer.  My camera lens could not capture the entirety of the room.

It's a nice clubhouse.  It's an insider palace.

There was a lot of controversy among bloggers during the runup to the NPC event.  The first panelists announced were Jim Guckert/Jeff Gannon of the activist GOP-USA front Talon News, Ana Marie Cox of wonkette.com, and John Stanton of Congress Daily--this according to Mike Madden of Gannett News, who assembled the panel in coordination with Rick Dunham of Business Week, who hosted the event.  

Blogger John Aravosis at Americablog.com quickly pointed out that the panel was not representative of the perspectives of those who had broken the Guckert story, accusing the panel of being more circus than serious examination.

In conversation with me, Madden pointed out that the list of panelists first published on the National Press Club site was never intended to be a final one.  The reaction to it, he felt, was premature and even misguided.

But one of the facts of the panel - the decision to invite Guckert/Gannon at all - highlights how journalism in this country has become broken, has lost its professional focus.  It shows that we have reached the point where journalism, as it is practiced today, is no longer a true "profession" at all.

Aravosis accused the National Press Club of giving Guckert/Gannon a kind of legitimacy by proxy.  By inviting him to participate in a panel discussion precipitated by his political thuggery in journalist drag, the august National Press Club conferred on him a credibility he surely had not earned.  Furthermore, the act brought disrepute on the Club, and by extension, on all other journalists.  

"We did not give him credibility by proxy.  The panel either ignored him or argued with him," Mr. Madden argued when I asked him about this.  

"Maybe I don't hold the Press Club in such high esteem, but I don't understand that reaction, that we gave him extra credibility by inviting him.  I don't know who made the decisions about the panels about Blair and Glass, but as far as I'm concerned, I think it would have been more fair and newsier if they had attended.  I don't know if they were invited or not," Madden explained.

Madden's comments highlight a serious difference between the perceptions of insider D. C. journalists and many citizen consumers of journalism.  Essentially, as Madden knows, that the Club is open to those who pay: there are no other controls.  So, membership should not confer credibility.  But Madden is an insider, one of the "cool kids."  Outsiders, weaned on images of Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as David Woodward and Carl Bernstein, have higher expectations of journalism as a profession, and think that the trappings of the epicenter of journalism in the nation's capital should be reserved for those whose work merits imitation.

The confusion arises because journalism, as practiced in DC, is not really a "profession," not today, at least.  A true profession has a code of ethics, standards for admission, standards for continuous training and disciplinary processes.  

Medicine is a profession.  I've trained as a psychologist: psychology, let me tell you, most certainly is a profession.  I'm also a consultant: consulting is not a profession.  Anyone can claim the title "consultant."  

I contacted Bill Kovach, Chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, at the Washington, D. C. based Project for Excellence in Journalism to find out more about the status of journalism as a profession.  To his knowledge, there had never been a serious movement to establish a means of licensure, a code of ethics, and a disciplinary body for journalists due to First Amendment concerns.

Doctors, lawyers and psychologists are rightly licensed by individual states, but a state controlled licensure for journalists would create a state controlled media.  Armstrong Williams and GOP-USA/Talon News notwithstanding, we do not have government control of our media today.  Yes, we have journalism to the highest bidder, but the highest bidder is not usually government, even now, when administration has expanded its reach to buy and plant stories in various media outlets.

So, how do you acquire the title of "journalist" today?  

You get hired by someone to write copy on the back of the advertising that pays the bills.  It's that simple.  Where you get to sit depends, at first, on the reputation of that "back of the advertising."  Later, and as you go, you have to develop your own means of access, your own way of moving to the more and more desirable tables or rings.

During the panel, Julie Hirschfeld of the Baltimore Sun pointed out that the process of credentialing journalist on Capitol Hill depends on working for a qualified media outlet with a need for daily access.  The employer is tacitly assumed to be the controller of the quality of journalism practiced.  Those giving the credentials are not.

So, how can journalism become a profession rather than simply a means for starting towards the center of DC status?  

Hint:  who says the government has to do the licensing?

Journalists of conscience, unions representing journalists, and schools of journalism could come together to create a code of ethics and process for credentialing professional journalists without any government participation.  

How would such a systems work?  Well, you could not force media outlets to hire only those whom you credential, but you could create a brand name and, over time, pressure media outlets to hire only accredited journalists and to publish their adherence to the standards on their mastheads.  

Coupled with a vigorous and sustained campaign to educate the public about the brand and code of ethics, such a body could eventually create a meaningful institutional and cultural counterweight to the systemic pressure from advertisers and guardians of government access, whose combined pressures dictate what stories get reported and how they are presented.  Taking this action would give the public good some institutional representation in a consolidating, corporate media world which too often distorts truth in favor of circus entertainment.

At ePluribus Media, most of us are not, and have never been, "journalists."  That is, no one has ever paid us to write stories on the back of advertising.  But we endeavor to commit journalism, and we define this craft using the "Statement of Shared Purpose" published by the Committee of Concerned Journalists.

Why should journalists do this, too?  First, it is in their self-interest, as the public continues to hold the field in ever-lower esteem.  Second, it is in the public interest, since our democracy cannot survive without a free, responsible and independent press.

The 2005 news consumption survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press puts the public's lack of confidence in the national news media in stark terms:  

"Public discontent with the news media has increased dramatically.  Americans find the mainstream media much less credible than they did in the mid-1980's.  They are even more critical of the way the press collects and reports news.  More ominously, the public also questions the news media's core values and morality.  A short-lived upswing in the media's image in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 only served to cast these negative attitudes in sharp relief."

Restoring public confidence in the media won't happen if media outlets continue to abdicate their responsibility to check and report facts.

Journalists of conscience will surely face a backlash if they take up the call to create an identifiable, ethics and methods based profession.  The Pew Research Center's data show a clear partisan difference in levels of trust accorded to the news media, with Republicans more cynical than democrats.  Adherence to the Committee of Concerned Journalists' "Statement of  Shared Purpose" would have the effect of further angering the dittoheads and Fox News junkies of the world, since Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News Networks are the prime architects of the smackdown style of news "reporting," factual manipulation and misrepresentation that infect American media today.  They are a good part of the reason American journalism truly stinks.

But what choice can there be?  Face it, journalists:  you will be attacked as partisan elites anyway, no matter what you do, so why not attempt to do what you do with greater integrity?  

Where do you think the process ends, and where do you think you will be if this movement of the degradation of journalism achieves its ultimate ends?  Where do you think the nation will be, and what will its laws look like?  Where will the First Amendment be then?

Journalism in America has deep roots in the "little guy" standing up to the plutocratic abuses of the day.  But journalists have fallen out of touch; they've become timid.  Like the people at the Brookings Institution, journalists today are most interested in being invited to the special seating area with its four-color, laminated table tents.  

But, journalists, once the money men have finished buying and selling you, they may not be able to protect you from the crusading fundamentalists who have less interest in James Madison and more confidence in Tim Lahaye.  I wouldn't call that an even trade.  

So, we at ePluribus Media call on you, journalists of conscience, to take your own destiny into your own hands.  Create your profession.  Protect the nation.  Stop sucking up to the bullies who have overrun over that great big D. C. high school e cafeteria.

Your future - and maybe ours - is in your hands.

Though we may have to take it from you.