Journalists’ source privilege: one privilege or two?
Journalists’ source privilege is in the air. In the US, the House of Representatives has recently passed a (not particularly readable) Bill recognising a journalists’ source privilege (the Free Flow of Information Act of 2009), and it has been introduced into the Senate. In the UK, a prosecution of a local newspaper journalist and the police source who “leaked” stories to her was recently dismissed (indeed, a similar case against a member of parliament will also not proceed, though another is still pending).
On a judicial level, the Trial Chamber of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCCL) (pdf) (noted on the CPJ blog), relying on the earlier decision of the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in Prosecutor v Bradjanin and Talic (11 December 2002), held that a Liberian journalist did not have to divulge the names of those who facilitated his access to a war zone. In Sanoma Uitgevers BV v the Netherlands Application no 38224/03 (31 March 2009) (noted in my previous post), building on its seminal and hugely influential decision in Goodwin v UK Application no 17488/90, [1996] ECHR 16 (27 March 1996), the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) explored the limits of such a privilege.…
