(RSF/IFEX) – On 15 July 2002, RSF backed five major British media – “The Guardian”, “The Independent”, “Financial Times”, “The Times” and Reuters news agency – in their planned appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against efforts to force them to hand over confidential documents to the authorities. The organisation stressed that […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 15 July 2002, RSF backed five major British media – “The Guardian”, “The Independent”, “Financial Times”, “The Times” and Reuters news agency – in their planned appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against efforts to force them to hand over confidential documents to the authorities.
The organisation stressed that journalists’ right to protect their sources is “the only guarantee of independent investigative journalism.” RSF called on the court to continue to condemn countries that attack that right, as it did on 26 March 1996. The organisation described current attempts in Europe to undermine the protection of journalistic sources as “particularly worrying.”
RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard noted that five European Union member countries – France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy and the United Kingdom – have “regularly challenged” the right to confidentiality, which he called “the pillar of press freedom.” He called on ECHR President Luzius Wildhaber to “strongly condemn countries that continue to threaten one of the keys to freedom of information in Europe.”
The five British media are refusing to hand over documents, sent to them anonymously, which contain allegedly false information that, when published, was thought to have caused the share price of the Interbrew brewery to fall. The media are resisting an initial order made in 2001 to hand over the documents. In July 2002, the British House of Lords refused to hear an appeal of the ruling. As such, the media are appealing to the ECHR, to protest the violation of the right to confidentiality and the right to freedom of expression.
The following cases highlight the recent undermining of the protection of sources by five European countries:
In Northern Ireland, journalists Lena Ferguson and Alex Thomson were warned on 3 May that they would be charged with contempt of court in Belfast if they refused to reveal the names of four British soldiers whom they interviewed in 1997 in exchange for a promise of anonymity, as part of a Channel 4 TV documentary about the shootings in the province on “Bloody Sunday”, 30 January 1972 (see IFEX alerts of 3 May 2002).
In Belgium, on 29 May, a Brussels court ordered journalists Douglas de Coninck and Marc Vandermeir, of the daily “De Morgen”, to pay a fine of 25 euros (approx. US$25) for every hour that they continued to refuse to reveal their sources for an article they had written stating that the Belgian State Railways had overshot its budget. The fine was only lifted after strong national and international public pressure.
In Italy, on 3 May, the home and office of journalist Guido Ruotolo, a columnist with the daily “La Stampa”, were searched by police after his newspaper printed material about an anti-terrorist investigation.
In Luxembourg, on 1 March, the home of freelance journalist Jean Nicolas was searched by police and all of his computer equipment was confiscated. A warrant had been issued for his arrest for “stealing a criminal investigation file”. The proofs of a book he was about to publish on money-laundering were in the computer.
In France, challenges to the confidentiality of sources are frequent. Jean-Pierre Rey, a photo-journalist with the Gamma agency, was held for interrogation for nearly four days in Paris last September by the National Anti-Terrorist Service (DNAT). He later denounced the pressure he underwent to reveal his sources. Four other journalists were pressured in a similar way by French legal officials in 2000 and 2001. The tapping of several journalists’ phones, which was revealed in January 2002, is another serious violation of the right to protect sources. Since September 2001, RSF has been calling for the amendment of Article 109, paragraph 2, of the French Criminal Procedure Code, in order to strengthen journalists’ right to protect their sources (see IFEX alerts of 18 April, 1 February and 16 January 2002 and 10 September 2001).
International institutions themselves fail to respect this basic right. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) decided on 9 June 2002 to order former “Washington Post” reporter Jonathan Randal to give evidence about an interview he had in 1993 with a former Bosnian Serb leader. He had already refused to answer a summons by the court to testify at the trial of Bosnian Serb leaders Momir Talic and Radoslav Brdjanin (see IFEX alert of 12 June 2002).
In May, the European Parliament approved the amendment by the European Union of the 1997 European directive on the protection of telecommunications data and information. This will oblige member-countries to pass laws allowing the retention of data about telephone and electronic communications traffic and make it easier to monitor who journalists contact.
