TelePolis writes about the video showing gross mistreatment of a young Iraqi by British troops, and goes back to the fake torture images published by The Mirror in 2004 subsequently dismantled by the British military. ¹ They suggest that back then, the fake images were produced by the military in order to discredit the media and prevent further research into scandals involving the British army in Iraq.
I think this is all based on a story by Owen Gibson in the GuardianUnlimited, 2004-05-18:
It is understood that as few as three people at Trinity Mirror know the soldiers’ names - the reporter who broke the story, Paul Byrne; Stephen White, the northern news editor; and Connor Hanna, the paper’s head of news. It is thought that neither Morgan - who defiantly stood by the story to the end - nor his interim replacement, Des Kelly, knows the identity of the two men. ²
With journalists protecting their sources, and the goverments exploiting this motivation, they have a perfect outlet for their propaganda. It reminds me of the discussion surrounding Valerie Plame. There, we also have a journalist, Judith Miller, who protects her source, and goes to jail. There’s a German summary by Thomas Pany in TelePolis , 2005-07-14. ³
The tricky part here is that the journalist goes to jail to protect a source that committed a crime by disclosing the information. Which leads us to the source of the problem: Why do we protect sources? We protect sources so that the media can act as a fourth branch in our government. We need checks and balances, and the media is another such institution. In order to protect whistleblowers, and in order to enable the media to check and help balance the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of our government.
Protection of sources is not a value *per se*. The value is the checks and balances on the powerful in our world. In every case, a journalist has to carefully consider whether the sources talking to them are agents trying to work against our public interest, or whether they are whistleblowers aiding out public interests. If you protect a source that is trying to work against our public interest, then the journalist is misapplying the rules.
As John Horvath wrote in TelePolis, 2006-01-23:
A journalist’s right to protect their confidential sources isn’t absolute. It goes without saying that any failure to honor a promise of confidentiality would make it harder in the future to persuade a frightened government employee to talk about corruption in high places or a worried worker to reveal corporate crimes. Nevertheless, protecting the identities of confidential sources is a journalistic right that should be recognised by the courts, but only when it protects genuine whistle-blowers, not when it shields government or corporate wrongdoing. Thus, if someone breaks the law by giving information to a journalist, or reveals to a journalist that they have committed a crime, the journalist has to be able to argue that in that specific case, protecting the source’s identity serves the public more than bringing the source to trial. ⁴
Back to the faked torture images: Did the forgeries protect or harm our public interest? Are the journalists in question protecting their sources doing the right thing or not?
#Iraq