'Professionalization'

'PROFESSIONALIZATION' WHEREAS • in those countries where obligatory membership of colegios for journalists directly contravenes constitutional provisions specifically ruling it out - as in Chile - or where the national supreme court, interpreting the local Constitution and the American Convention on Human Rights - as in the Dominican Republic - has declared it unconstitutional, there has arisen a new movement mocking these determinations, in the guise of a new concept of "professionalization" • "professionalization" will be based on a legal requirement of a university degree in journalism to exercise the right of free speech • both the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Supreme Court of the Dominican Republic have anticipated this strategy with great clarity, declaring in their respective decisions that both the legal requirement to join a colegio and the obligation to be a journalism graduate are incompatible with the exercise of free expression of thought • "professionalization" bilis have been introduced in the Dominican Republic and Chilean legislatures THE 47th GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE IAPA RESOLVES • to warn its members to be alert to so-called "professionalization" • to ask the congresses of Chile and the Dominican Republic, before approving the bilis for "professionalization" to take into account adverse national and internationallegislation, and then to reject the bilis.