Word: journalists
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...principle that's drummed into reporters from the day they start their careers: confidential sources always stay secret. But what if revealing a journalist's sources could help solve a crime? Or help catch dangerous terrorists...
...That was the question at the heart of the case of Suzanne Breen - a journalist in Northern Ireland who refused to co-operate with police after they demanded she hand over notes and other materials relating to a terrorist attack in March that killed two soldiers. Over a month after the high-profile case was first heard in a Belfast court, a judge ruled in the journalist's favor on June 18. (See pictures of new hope for Belfast...
...with the police over their sources. In 1971, as the province entered the bloodiest period of its 25-year sectarian conflict, BBC reporter Bernard Falk was jailed for refusing to provide the police with details of an interview he carried out with an IRA spokesman. Over twenty years later, journalist Ed Moloney published a controversial interview with a member of a Protestant paramilitary group (and police informer) who had been accused of the murder of a Catholic solicitor. The paramilitary-turned-informer told Moloney that he had in fact alerted police officers to the murder plot, but that they...
...Speaking outside Belfast's Laganside Courts after Thursday's judgment, Breen's editor, Noirin Hegarty, described a journalist's protection of his or her sources as "an absolute value, not a convenient principle." But what swayed the Belfast Recorder Tom Burgess was the risk to Breen's life. In his ruling, Judge Burgess said complying with the police request could lead to "a breach of [Breen's] right to life under the European Convention [on Human Rights]" "The Real IRA have killed, and attempted to kill, for much less. During the attack on the soldiers at Massereene barracks, the gunmen...
...questions may now be asked in Northern Ireland why public money was spent on attempting to force a journalist to breach the confidentiality of her sources, not least by the journalist herself. "I am perplexed as to why the police wasted time and resources in taking this case", said Breen outside court after the judgment. That's a line of enquiry Breen and other reporters may be keen to follow...