Couldn’t Tell You Even If I Wanted To? Anonymity of Journalists’ Sources, Voluntary Disclosure and Abuse of Process

Abstract

In October 2016, the Court of Appeal handed down judgment in Norman, an appeal against conviction for misconduct in public office on the basis of information sold to a newspaper by a serving prison officer. The particular interest in the appeal, however, comes from its wider engagement of rights afforded by Article 10 ECHR and the interaction of that provision with voluntary disclosure. The decision highlights that where information about a source is provided voluntarily by a newspaper, the source will struggle to argue that Article 10 rights have been infringed. This article explores the existing law on journalistic privilege and highlights the gap in the precedents that means, even post Norman, there is no clear answer to a question likely to be increasingly important in times of closer scrutiny of the media.