Consider the source

Your suggestion [in the July 8 editorial, “A Journalist Jailed”] that we should consider giving journalists the same confidentiality guarantee held by lawyers, physicians and priests misses the important distinctions involved.

First, the guarantee is actually given by, not to, the lawyer, physician or priest. The far more important issue is the motive of the “source.” His purpose is to reveal information, usually damaging or scandalous, about some other person or persons. He wants his (or her) revelations made known to the world without attribution to him.

The client, patient or penitent, wants neither his name nor revelation exposed to the public. His purpose is to reveal information about himself so that he can receive protection, treatment or comfort to which he is entitled by law, contract or religious tenet from the person he is addressing.

If a journalist is given the power to grant confidentiality, a source can, with immunity from defamation, criminal or civil, fabricate the facts. As the law now stands, a “source” knows that sooner or later he might be called upon to answer for the falsity of his statements intended for public disclosure.

I’m more comfortable with what I read and journalists should be more comfortable knowing that what they are given is more likely to be true than if they guaranteed confidentiality.

Donald V. Organ

Northport