Next week, the Northern Editor of the Sunday Tribune, Mr Ed Moloney, has an appointment in court which may have a heavy bearing on the quality of Northern Ireland's democracy. It will also bear heavily on Mr Moloney's personal life, for he faces the choice of a prison sentence on the one hand or destroying his journalistic career and endangering his life on the other.
In the course of its investigation into the murder of the lawyer, Mr Patrick Finucane, in 1989, the team led by the newly appointed Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, John Stevens, has demanded to see Mr Moloney's notes of an interview with Mr William Stobie an Ulster Defence Association member who, the RUC claim, admitted involvement in the murder.
Once more the confidentiality of journalistic sources is being put to the test. In the light of the Goodwin Judgment by the the European Court of Human Rights, the police action seems surprising. In that judgment, the United Kingdom was held to be in breach of the European Convention on Human rights for its insistence that a journalist should reveal his sources. The section of the Convention invoked by the court was that which guarantees freedom of the press and this freedom is once again at stake. Mr Moloney has said that he is prepared to go to prison rather than hand over his notebook. In doing so, he was following the example of many distinguished journalists in the past.
In this State two journalists, Mr Joe Dennigan and Mr Kevin O'Kelly, have been imprisoned for refusing to identify sources. In more recent times, Ms Susan O'Keeffe , whose World In Action programme led to the establishment of the Beef Tribunal, avoided imprisonment on a technicality. In 1996, however, in a case in which Mr Barry O'Kelly of the Star newspaper refused to disclose a source, the office of the Attorney General accepted that, in the light of the Goodwin Judgment, the law had developed since Kevin O'Kelly's imprisonment in the 1970s.
The case in which Mr Moloney has become enmeshed is a particularly sordid one. There have been consistent claims of collusion by members of the RUC in the murder of Mr Finucane. Mr Stobie claims that not only was he a member of a loyalist paramilitary organisation, but also was a police informer for the RUC's Special Branch.
Were Mr Moloney to hand over his notes, he too could be termed as a police informer and in the violent world of armed paramilitaries, police informers are an extremely endangered species. Put simply, his life would be placed in great danger. So too would the honourable tradition of the media as a watchdog for the public. If confidentiality was not guaranteed, few would be willing to blow the whistle on wrongdoers.
Emerson's aphorism that "democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors" still applies. An insistence on the revelation of sources would result in the removal of that editorial tempering. For this reason, the media in this State, in the United Kingdom and the United States, have focused on Mr Moloney's case. He should be allowed honour his pledge of confidentiality without threats to his freedom or his life.