(RSF/IFEX) – On 3 May 2005, plainclothes police officers in Orleans interrogated two journalists from the daily “Le Berry Républicain” in an attempt to get them to reveal their sources for their reports about a murder investigation. “It is particularly shocking and untimely that, as World Press Freedom Day was being celebrated all over the […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 3 May 2005, plainclothes police officers in Orleans interrogated two journalists from the daily “Le Berry Républicain” in an attempt to get them to reveal their sources for their reports about a murder investigation.
“It is particularly shocking and untimely that, as World Press Freedom Day was being celebrated all over the world, gendarmes questioned two journalists and tried to find out their sources as part of a preliminary inquiry into a supposed breach of the secrecy of a crime investigation,” RSF said.
“The confidentiality of journalists’ sources is an inviolable principle that allows no exceptions,” the organisation added, stressing that it is recognised by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 109-2 of the French Code of Criminal Procedure.
“Furthermore, in a famous ruling on 27 March 1996 in Goodwin v. United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights defined the protection of sources as one of the cornerstones of press freedom,” RSF noted.
Without giving “Le Berry Républicain” prior notification, three plainclothes members of the Orleans gendarmerie entered the newspaper’s Issoudun bureau on 3 May at around 10:00 a.m. (local time). The officers questioned a journalist for one hour in an unsuccessful attempt to get her to disclose the sources for reports she and another journalist wrote for the paper’s 30 April, 2 May and 3 May issues. The articles dealt with a local murder in which the body has not been found. They were entitled, “Body Still Not Found”, “Body’s Scant Traces” and “Details of the Murder Without a Body”.
The gendarmes also went to “Le Berry Républicain”‘s head office in Bourges at 1:30 p.m. to speak with the other journalist, who is in charge of the paper’s crime section. As he had the day off, they went to his home to question him about the sources for the reports.
The deputy state prosecutor in Châteauroux ordered the interrogation of the two journalists because of a supposed breach of the murder investigation’s confidentiality. “Le Berry Républicain” editor-in-chief Bernard Stéphan said he was shocked by the police action, adding, “Even if [the journalists] had sources, they would obviously not give them.”
