What is it about so many of the commenters in this thread that they're allergic to good faith objectivity? When you write a study for publication, or arguably when you report about a study, one of the things you're responsible for doing is to define any terms which may otherwise be ambiguous for their usage within the context of the study. Defining what this one study / article means by the word "journalist" is not the same thing as gatekeeping, and it certainly isn't some slippery slope of demanding that journalism be a licensed profession. I haven't seen a single comment advocating for that. What I am consistently seeing is several people asking "For the purposes of this study, what qualifies as a "journalist"." Which is a very fair question and deserving of a good faith response.
The trend that I'm more worried about is identifying journalists as ideological opponents. Or even as "enemies of the people".
Only approved organizations could publish on the election after a certain date.
We are soaking the propaganda and we don’t know it.
This itself is an authoritarian tendency that is increasingly alarming me lately (a feeling that started after 9/11.) I think we're going to see "journalist" becoming a licensed profession within the next 20 years, which is a commonality amongst all authoritarian dictatorships. When people start talking about who is or isn't a journalist, and identifying ideological opponents as not journalists, the only outcome is a media that is defined as legitimate by how loyal it is.