THE EUROPEAN Court of Human Rights has upheld the right of five British news groups to protect an anonymous journalistic source by not handing over a leaked document to a Belgian brewing company.
The ruling in favour of the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Times, the Independentand Reuters newswire has been hailed as a victory for press freedom.
The Strasbourg-based court held that a High Court order to disclose the leaked document to Interbrew violated the news groups’ right to freedom of expression. It awarded them €160,000 in respect of costs and expenses.
The case concerned a report that Interbrew was plotting a bid for South African Breweries, which first appeared on the Financial Times website in late 2001.
The story appeared in the hours after a reporter had received a copy of a leaked document from a source known only as X. Before publishing, the reporter phoned Interbrew’s investment bank Goldman Sachs advising them that he had received the document and planned to publish it.
The other news groups, also referring to the leaked document and a possible bid, published articles on the same and following days. They continued to report the story following a press statement by Interbrew, now part of brewing giant Anheuser-Busch InBev, adding that the leaked documents had possibly been doctored.
Interbrew’s security consultants, Kroll, tried without success to identify X.
Interbrew initiated proceedings in December 2001 against the news groups in the British courts, which found in its favour and ordered surrender of the documents. This ruling was upheld on appeal. In 2002 the House of Lords refused leave for a further appeal.
A chamber of seven judges of the Strasbourg court said in their ruling that the disclosure order was a violation of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which upholds the right to freedom of expression.
The judges stressed the “chilling effect” of journalists being seen to assist in the identification of anonymous sources.
They found that Interbrew’s interests in eliminating, by proceedings against X, the threat of damage through future dissemination of confidential information and in obtaining damages for past breaches of confidence was insufficient to outweigh the public interest in the protection of journalists’ sources.
The court held that X’s alleged harmful intent, and doubts surrounding the authenticity of the leaked document, were not important factors in the case, as neither factor had been ascertained with the necessary degree of certainty in the legal proceedings.
Although Interbrew received prior warning that the Financial Timesarticle would contain allegedly confidential and sensitive commercial information, it had not sought an injunction to prevent its publication.
The Financial Timessaid in an editorial that the ruling recognised that giving journalists the legal space to uncover the truth is fundamental to healthy democracy.