Am I a journalist?

That's (more or less) one of the issues the Brazilian supreme court may decide on today as the justices reconsider Brazil's dictatorship-era laws governing the press. 

In the United States, where "journalist" is a flexible term along the lines of "writer," "expert," or "fresh pasta," I am. But here, a 1969 law requires journalists must be trained and certified like American lawyers, doctors and barbers. By that definition, I'm not.

As a result, pretty much every reporter I know here studied journalism in college, and many are surprised when I tell them that most of my American colleagues have undergraduate degrees in things like English, history, poli sci (that's me) or biology and learned about journalism writing for the school paper. They are intrigued to learn that Thomas Friedman, whose book "O Mundo E Plano" was big here, was a Mediterranean Studies major.

Many journalists — most, I think — would like to see a system more like ours, and indeed, the law has been temporarily suspended, reinstated, and temporarily suspended again over the last few years. A final court decision would be the next real step in that direction. Those who disagree, I can only assume, fear the day that the next generation of Brazilian journalists will have wasted their college days studying something completely irrelevant to our job. Like, say, economics.

P.S. — There's a corollary to the certification-required rule: Brazilians who studied journalism and now work as publicists or government spokespeople or even bar-owners still identify themselves as "jornalistas." 

I'll often hear: "I'm a journalist, too, but I'm not practicing." I wish I could respond "Really? I'm practicing, but I'm not a journalist." But usually I just bite my tongue and remind myself that the word means two different things in two different countries.

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/brazil/090401/am-i-journalist