Citizen journalist or citizen?

Today's news release says:

"Councils should open up their public meetings to local news 'bloggers' and routinely allow online filming of public discussions as part of increasing their transparency, Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles said today.

"To ensure all parts of the modern-day media are able to scrutinise Local Government, Mr Pickles believes councils should also open up public meetings to the 'citizen journalist' as well as the mainstream media, especially as important budget decisions are being made.

"Local Government Minister Bob Neill has written to all councils urging greater openness and calling on them to adopt a modern day approach so that credible community or 'hyper-local' bloggers and online broadcasters get the same routine access to council meetings as the traditional accredited media have."

This is an important shift in how government understands the relationship between itself, the media and citizens. I hope it also applies to Parish Councils - if so I think it's almost there.

The problem above is the word "credible" . It's a word that local authorities can use to control access to their meetings. A local authority can still argue that their local bloggers are not "credible". Ironically that might make things worse - because a citizen is entitled to sit in a council meeting - maybe a hyperlocal blogger deemed not "credible" would be turfed out?

Clearly common sense will prevail in most places but this idea appears to encourage us to think that local bloggers are some sort of journalist first. In truth most of them of unquestionably citizens first - hence their value in the battle for transparency.

There will be calls for Mr Pickles to take a further step - the one being suggested by Chris Taggart who sits on the Local Government Open Data panel - and to declare that any citizen is entitled to record any public council meeting.