I used to hitch-hike quite a bit, and a few times I got picked up by a journalist just back from covering some God-awful war, I guess they just wanted to talk to someone who didn't want to kill people, just to get it out of their head. I'd get out of their car feeling like a low-rent psychiatrist, thanking my lucky stars that I didn't have their job. Journalists have my deepest respect.
"Journalism" is an activity, like programming, not a protected class of people. No one who routinely does journalism thinks they have rights above and beyond ordinary people; the very fact that anyone can do journalism is what entails that any rights "journalists" have are rights that everyone should have.