The
prickly subject of source protection took centre
stage once more towards the end of last year in
the United States when a slew of court actions demanding
that reporters reveal sources saw journalists sentenced
to jail and, subsequently, the introduction of a
federal “shield” law that would provide
“absolute protection” for confidential
sources. Democrat senator Christopher Dodd’s
“Free Speech Protection Act of 2004” is
designed to prevent the compelled disclosure of
sources “regardless of whether or not the source
was promised confidentiality”. It appears that
progress is being made, but source protection remains
a dilemma throughout journalism.
In
Northern Ireland, for example, investigating allegations
of collusion between the British security forces
and Protestant death squads has become an ethical
minefield for journalists. In that area, journalists
have to handle the issue of their confidential sources
with the same delicate professionalism that an army
bomb expert would deal with a volatile bottle of
nitro-glycerine. Practically, the problem here,
too, is one of protection of sources. Often journalists
are granting anonymity either to terrorists who
are working for the security forces as agents and
informers, or rogue elements within the security
forces who are using their positions allegedly to
arrange the murder of political opponents or terrorist
activists.
Later
this year another formal inquiry into one of Northern
Ireland’s most notorious collusion cases is
expected to begin. In 1989, the loyalist Ulster
Freedom Fighters terrorist group murdered the prominent
human rights solicitor Patrick Finucane at his Belfast
home in front of his family. Loyalist activists
believed to be working for the security forces played
a major role in his murder. The case has already
led to confrontations between journalists investigating
collusion, the security forces, and the British
judiciary. But how else are journalists expected
to gain bona fide information from confidential
sources about the State’s alleged illegal activities
unless they give a cast-iron guarantee of anonymity
to those primary sources?
In
such scenarios, journalists need first to address
the moral dilemma: are they investigative journalists
first, or citizens of the State first? They cannot
jump between the two. If they decide it is the latter,
then they should not be giving confidential sources
worthless guarantees that at some point in the future
they will abandon. In the issue of collusion, for
journalists to identity their confidential sources
makes them no better than the agents of the State
they are exposing.
Let
me state categorically where I stand on the issue
of a journalist’s confidential sources of information.
For me, the fundamental ethical principle of journalism
is that we have a moral imperative to give a guarantee
of anonymity to genuine confidential sources providing
bona fide information. There can be no transparency
in the trust that our sources must have in us as
professional journalists. If we sacrifice that trust,
we betray our credibility as reporters of the truth.
Likewise, if there is no trust between the confidential
source and the journalist, it destroys the concept
of honesty in the verification of the evidence given
by that source.
The
easy way out
As
a weekly newspaper editor, I faced the ultimate
crisis of conscience in the aftermath of the screening
in October 1991 of the Channel 4 Dispatches programme,
The Committee. It would have been easy to
get the State and perceived pro-establishment reporters
off my back by revealing the identity of my source
of information of the Inner Circle, the “secret”
organisation, denied by the RUC, that linked some
members of the security forces to loyalist death
squads. I chose not to, and paid a price personally
and professionally. I have learned there is a thin
line between journalism and indirectly working for
the State, but that thin line is still clearly recognisable
in terms of ethics. As a senior lecturer in journalism
in further and higher education, I have used my
experiences to guide others through that ethical
minefield of investigative journalism, particularly
on the issue of source protection.
In
this respect, I strongly disagree with the ethical
stance on sources taken by the reporter Nick Martin-Clarke.
I do not wish this to deteriorate into a personal
character assassination of Mr Martin-Clarke, but
I do criticise his ethical stance on the evidence
of his article, “When a journalist must tell”,
published in the British Journalism Review
(vol. 14, no. 2). In this piece, Mr Martin-Clarke
made the following startling confession: “
... I broke an undertaking I had given as a journalist
...” He also notes: “...journalists often
end up in court for refusing to divulge their sources.
I, however, appeared against my source after having
given an undertaking of confidentiality. Understandably
therefore there was an outcry in some quarters after
the verdict.” Mr Martin-Clarke attempts to
justify his ethical position by stating: “An
absolutist stance on confidentiality is akin to
total pacifism or to not telling a lie even to save
a life. It is an eccentricity that has little to
offer real-world journalism.” But there is
an absolutist stance on source protection –
it’s called the moral imperative to protect
the identity of that source.
Words
may be our weapons, but our word as journalists
is the moral anchor upon which our great profession
is based. If we deliberately sacrifice that trust,
we cut our profession adrift, and our ships known
as credibility, objectivity, and believability will
perish in the violent seas of suspicion and backstabbing.
You may pose the ethical dilemma how do you survive
in such a scenario? There is an old maxim, if you
can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Applied to the journalistic issue of source protection
it reads if you can’t keep your word, don’t
do the story. I’ve had a lifetime’s association
with the Boys’ Brigade movement, and we have
a hymn, which states: “... will your anchor
hold in the storms of life?”. In spite of all
the technological developments in the past decade,
modern political journalism is still weighted firmly
to the ethical anchor that a good journalist never
reveals his or her sources.
The
Press Complaints Commission’s Code of Practice
makes the following recommendation under the banner
of “confidential sources”: “Journalists
have a moral obligation to protect confidential
sources of information.” In practical terms
this advice could be interpreted as: “A journalist
who has a genuine source providing bona fide information
should take whatever steps are required to protect
the identity of that source.” Society can scream
about the public’s right to privacy, but the
most fundamental demand is the right to keep private
the identity of confidential sources.
In
this respect, I speak from frontline investigative
experience as one of the researchers of The Committee,
which probed allegations of collusion between the
then Northern Ireland police force, the Royal Ulster
Constabulary, and loyalist death squads. Whatever
your views on the debate over allegations of collusion,
there can be no doubting that this Dispatches
programme became a watershed in investigative journalism
in Northern Ireland. In 1992, Channel 4 was heavily
fined for refusing to tell the RUC about a source
for the programme. Parts of the Prevention of Terrorism
legislation were used against Channel 4 and the
independent producer, Box Productions, when the
RUC won a court order for materials to be handed
over after the Dispatches programme was broadcast.
For the record, the RUC issued a detailed statement
in the press in August 1992, noting: “... the
RUC wishes to assure the people of Northern Ireland
and beyond that the allegations, as portrayed by
the Channel 4 television programme, are without
foundation”.
More
than a decade on from the transmission of that programme,
I am as firmly committed to the concept of source
protection as I was in 1991, when, as a full-time
journalist, I was interviewed by the RUC concerning
my Inner Circle source. I firmly believe, too, that
the solution to this problem will be found in our
journalist training centres. People entering the
craft of investigative journalism need to ask themselves
a fundamental ethical question: how far am I prepared
to go to protect the identity of a genuine source?
If the wider media, and investigative journalism
in particular, is to have an effective ethical strategy
for this first decade of the new millennium and
beyond, the media industries should address the
issue of ethics at the training stage, rather than
waiting until the programmes are broadcast or the
articles published.
Questions
that must be asked
One
of the main vocational courses for the training
of journalists in the United Kingdom is the NCFE
NVQ Level 4. Ethics, based on the PCC’s Code
of Practice, is a fundamental part of the curriculum.
While firm guidelines can be drawn up through a
partnership of media educationists and media industrialists,
the individual journalist’s freedom of choice
must be respected. Media ethics in terms of journalist
training must be a consciencedriven curriculum.
The options and consequences can be explained in
depth, but the fundamental principle is that each
journalist must ultimately make the decision on
their methods to protect source identities according
to their own conscience.
The
pillars of such a conscience-driven curriculum are
based on the five essential questions of journalism:
who, what, where, why and how? These questions need
to be asked against a background of both informed
theory and practical reality. Applied to the protection
of sources, these questions could read:
