Licensing only works if you have to be in a certain jurisdiction to operate in it. Given that more "journalism" is online, if Murdoch or the Barclay Brothers or whoever don't like the restrictions of your licence, they can just employ journalists somewhere else. If they need boots on the ground, they can employ independent contractors.
How do you prevent independent journalists selling pieces to certain outlets without unfairly placing the burden on the journalist? Is it a list of proscribed publications? How does a publication get on the list? What happens to all the "good" journalists who work for an organisation when it gets put on the list?
What, exactly, is a journalist? Does it include columnists who write opinion pieces? If not, how do you prevent an outlet from running more and more "opinion pieces" masquerading as news? If you get defrocked for doing something your employer considers highly profitable, they can just rebrand you as a columnist.
What does it mean to be licensed? What does having a licence allow you to do that you can't do without one? Is this your "press pass" allowing you to ask questions at briefings? There have been cases recently when this has been revoked on a whim. Is it just to get a byline in a printed newspaper? Again, they can rebrand unlicensed journalists as runners, and print the piece under the name of a real journalist.
Journalism is not a terminal career like medicine or law. If you get thrown out of one of those professions, you lose your livelihood. There is nothing else that you are as well trained for that pays as well. You have to start at the bottom of something else. Most journalists are not particularly well paid. Former journalists can earn as much, if not more, writing press releases and advertising copy.
Doctors were once upon a time not very highly trained, medicine was a crapshoot, now things have changed. I'm sure it was a tremendous upheaval at the time. That it's a lot of work doesn't mean it can't be done.
A more interesting argument against doing this is considering the tradeoffs if implemented:
* e.g. the AMA has pretty successfully restricted the supply of doctors and driven the prices of medicine up,
* people are so paranoid about giving medical or legal advice they have to say things like "I'm not a doctor but... I'm not a lawyer but..."
Whenever people mention licensing practitioners of some trade, the interesting question is always "licence to do what?". All too often, the answer tends to be a boring and poorly thought out "licence to call yourself an X". It fails to answer "what can an X legally do that a non-X cannot?"
In the case of doctors, pharmacists and lawyers,things like surgery, controlled drugs, rights of audience are easy to restrict. If you are not one and try to do the job anyway, you won't get very far.
As a client, I cannot use a partitioner who is not licensed in my jurisdiction. If I have a video consultation with a real foreign doctor, they still can't write me a prescription I can take to my local pharmacist. No matter how good the doctor is, they are made deficient by not being registered with the GMC.
A journalist writes and publishes articles about current affairs. You can't legally prevent people doing that without a catastrophic infringement of free speech.
Every day, I read articles from publications from many countries. Those articles are not made deficient by the fact that they are not written by NUJ members.
Plenty of people read and believe bunkum written by people who don't even pretend to be journalists. Sticking little "licenced by..." Logo on the real stuff won't make a difference there.
How do you prevent independent journalists selling pieces to certain outlets without unfairly placing the burden on the journalist? Is it a list of proscribed publications? How does a publication get on the list? What happens to all the "good" journalists who work for an organisation when it gets put on the list?
What, exactly, is a journalist? Does it include columnists who write opinion pieces? If not, how do you prevent an outlet from running more and more "opinion pieces" masquerading as news? If you get defrocked for doing something your employer considers highly profitable, they can just rebrand you as a columnist.
What does it mean to be licensed? What does having a licence allow you to do that you can't do without one? Is this your "press pass" allowing you to ask questions at briefings? There have been cases recently when this has been revoked on a whim. Is it just to get a byline in a printed newspaper? Again, they can rebrand unlicensed journalists as runners, and print the piece under the name of a real journalist.
Journalism is not a terminal career like medicine or law. If you get thrown out of one of those professions, you lose your livelihood. There is nothing else that you are as well trained for that pays as well. You have to start at the bottom of something else. Most journalists are not particularly well paid. Former journalists can earn as much, if not more, writing press releases and advertising copy.