Why the 4th Estate continues to let us down

Over and over we read editors and writers aghast at writers and editors, and at law makers, that journalists are under fire. Worse, there are those in the press who are "stunned" to find hacks in their midst.

Why is this? It's harder to get a dog license than it is to call oneself a journalist. Yes, some go to school for it, and supposedly graduate with a degree of some sort or another. While that might mean they know how to spell, how to research, even how to write in sentences, that doesn't mean they'll be honest, or even accurate.

Reading the latest New Yorker article http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060116fa_fact about how journalists are being dragged into court to reveal their sources, I'm strict by how the writer, and it would seem all writers (witness the constant wringing of hands at www.huffingtonpost.com ) are

1. Worried about how the subpoenaed writer will lose their credibility with secret sources
--which is true, and a bad thing, granted.

2. NOT focusing on what the source revealed, leaving us with the classic 'it's not the crime, it's the cover-up'

3. Surprised when a writer succumbs to whatever failing and doesn't print the truth.
Hello? These are just people with at best, fedoras and a little press card in the band. They don't take an oath, or pass a test, or even get any sort of peer review process...

If writers want special privileges of privacy and protection, they need to step up and get serious about their credentials. Doctors and Lawyers have client privileges because they do that -- take oaths and pass tests... and get sued if they get it wrong.

What's really horrible is that our country is pretty much founded on the idea that the press will do the job in the way that we've glorified it in our minds... The first amendment gives freedom of speech and freedom of the press but doesn't give us a way to hold the operators of the press to any particular standard.

We Americans have either been just extremely lucky that reporters in the past took their jobs seriously, or (more probably) have always been having the wool dragged over our eyes. We're just sort of figuring this stuff out now.