What is Journalism? Who is a Journalist?

In my own opinion journalism is a lot more than just fact finding, opinion writing or commentary. Real journalism is a very noble profession and has an incredibly profound impact on our day to day lives. I beleive journalism is the reporting of events on every level. The dictionary defines it this way; "Journalism is the profession of writing or communicating, formally employed by publications and broadcasters, for the benefit of a particular community of people." Simply put journalism is just that, reporting the current events so everyone can know what's going on in the world. I also feel it could be described as seeking out and declaring truth. Journalism can't be, in any way, based on anything false. It must be the truth. I suppose that's why newspapers and magazines will do "retractions" whenever they accidentally post something that wasn't accurate. What is published must be the truth or else people won't trust the source and will discontinue reading it all together.

A journalist is the one who seeks out the truth, researches the events and makes public the news to the masses. I suppose because one doesn't need a licsense to practice researching and reporting information that anybody can be a journalist. Unlike becoming a lawyer where there is a bar exam, a journalist has no test to pass to begin spreading information to other people. I really feel that anybody and everybody in some way or another is a journalist.