An important and welcome victory for journalistic rights and civil liberties was won yesterday by the Northern Editor of the Sunday Tribune, Mr Ed Moloney, in the Belfast High Court. It rejected a ruling in a lower court that he should hand over to police notes of an interview with a loyalist paramilitary who has been charged with murdering the solicitor, Mr Patrick Finucane, in 1989.
The case raised issues of the confidentiality of journalistic sources and has resolved them in a manner which significantly extends legal protection by putting the onus on the police to show that breaching that principle would be useful for their investigations. That represents some progress, which may be extended to other jurisdictions, including the Republic's. It does not breach the principle that journalists, and the media, are subject to the law just like anyone else. Where the line should be drawn between the two principles is an abiding issue which will continue to preoccupy not only journalists and lawyers, but all those concerned with democratic rights.
It is increasingly important that journalists should be able to assure their sources of confidentiality at a time when media scrutiny has become such a vital element of democratic accountability. Mr Moloney's defence of the principle has highlighted that watchdog role. Had the police case been upheld, he could have been compelled to give evidence for the prosecution, based on an interview conducted nine years ago, which he scrupulously agreed not to publish until his informant, William Stobie, was charged with murdering Mr Finucane last June. Irrespective of whether this altogether released Mr Moloney from his obligation to respect the confidentiality of his interview, the logic of such a court appearance would set very dangerous precedents for all journalistic inquiry and reportage. As Mr Moloney said repeatedly, it would ruin his credibility and probably lose him his livelihood.
This is but one of the issues arising from this case. Others have to do with its sordid circumstances. There have been persistent claims of collusion by members of the RUC in Mr Finucane's murder. Stobie claims that he was also a police informer for the RUC's Special Branch. For Mr Moloney to have handed over his notes would have branded him an informer too in the eyes of the loyalist paramilitaries and could well have endangered his life. It also emerged during the court hearings that the police have had in their possession interview notes with Stobie much more detailed than those of Mr Moloney, made at the same time as his interview, but not made available to him or his lawyers.
Why then were the police so determined to get hold of Mr Moloney's notes? Was it to intimidate other journalistic research into the possibility of RUC collusion? The suspicion that this might be the case, has fuelled public concern that the Stevens inquiry into the RUC's role in the Finucane murder might itself be prejudiced, at a time when the Patten Commission report on reforming the force is fully in the public domain. That is another reason to welcome the outcome of this case.