Journalists have the right not to disclose the identity of their sources.
The right not to reveal journalistic sources
The protection of journalistic sources is one of the key rights that journalists have in order to exercise their freedom of expression and to fulfil their function as a ‘’public watchdog”.
Without such protection, journalists’ sources may refrain from helping them to fulfil their function. Journalists have this right regardless of whether their sources obtained the information legally or illegally.
The right not to reveal their sources protects journalists not only from specific orders to reveal the name of the source, but also from actions by the police or some other public authority which could lead to the identification of the source.
example The police cannot order a journalist to provide documents containing a lead to the identification of the source, listen in on a journalist’s phone conversations or search his/her house and data storage devices.
However, the secrecy of journalistic sources is not absolute and can be restricted in exceptional circumstances:
Restrictions
A journalist may be required to reveal his/her sources only in exceptional circumstances, if it is needed to protect a vital interest.
example The need to identify the person (source) who leaked a company’s confidential corporate plan or information in a highly sensitive criminal case, would not automatically be considered to be in the overriding public interest, justifying the disclosure of journalistic sources.
Any interference with the secrecy of a journalist’s sources must be treated with utmost caution. There should be adequate legal safeguards to prevent the authorities from abusing such exceptions.
The State Attorney's Office may, when this restriction is necessary in the interest of national security, territorial integrity and health protection, submit to the competent court a request to order the journalist to provide information about the source of the published information or the information he intends to publish.
The court may order a journalist to provide information about the source of published information or information that he intends to publish, if this is necessary for the protection of the public interest, and it is a matter of particularly significant and serious circumstances and it has been irrefutably established:
- that there is no reasonable alternative measure to the disclosure of information about the source of the information
- that the legally established interest of the public in disclosing information about the source of the information clearly prevails over the interest in protecting the source of the information.
The court, assessing the circumstances of the case, will exclude the public during the procedure of presenting information, and will warn the persons present that they are obliged to keep as a secret everything they learned during the procedure, as well as the consequences of revealing the secret.
How to complain
If you consider that the investigative judge’s order to disclose a source is disproportional and does not balance all involved interests, you should appeal it to a higher court. The decision of the higher court is final.