When a government is run by gangsters--e.g., Hussain's Iraq or any Communist government--you will not have both clean hands and access. The honorable thing to do is to oppose such a government on principle; you will have clean hands--in your own eyes at least--but you will not have access and you will be branded as "not objective--not a journalist" by those who sell out for access.There is no such thing as a journalism license; the First Amendment forbids that. But there is such a thing as a journalistic ESTABLISHMENT which will exert its PR power to make sure no one which confronts the fecklessness of its members is considered an "objective" journalist.
The only logical response from we-the-people is to
respect honest perspective openly admitted, andscorn the self-vaunted objectivity of the "journalist."