IT TOOK a liberal' newspaper like the Guardian to really plumb the depths of British journalism this week.
The learns is that sources for 'leaks' are never revealed. Journalists to their credit in the past gone to jail rather than reveal the source of such stories.
The reason is obvious. press exist, among other things, to ferret out those dirty corners of officialdom and public life. which governments and the powers that be want to conceal.
Given the actions and powers that exist in the real world those who give information journalists will inevitably be threatened with intimidation by the very deserve to be brought out into the open. Those journalists who reveal their sources therefore threaten the liberty and freedom of everyone in the country as well as propping up precisely those who deserve to have their activities dragged out into public view.
That intimidation is exactly what is happening with Sarah Tisdall - the civil servant charg ed with leaking information to the Guardian on cruise missiles.
The charges brought against Sarah Tisdall under the 'Official Secrets Act are absurd. No-one, including those who brought the prosecution, believe that Sarah Tisdall endangered so-called 'national security'. have been brought against her as a pure and simple exercise in intimidation.
The aim of this operation is to silence those who bring out into the light of day the consistent and constant attacks on democracy of the Thatcher government to have its activities exposed.
By giving in to the courts, by giving back the documents that would allow its traced, the Guardian has taken a significant step to make Britain a less free country even than it was before.
And why has the Guardian broken this most on BBC radio by Guardian editor Peter Preston. The Guardian had been arguing for weeks that the NGA and the trade unions must obey the law. That person or disagree with a law but a 'democrat' must always obey it.
Having served up this historical nonsense, which no jounalist involved on a major story had ever accepted before, the Guardian was then skewered on its own argument. It had to obey the law.
In its keenness to oppose trade union action the Guardian fell below the level of any second rate nineteenth century liberal -militant campaigner for civil rights it likes to build its image as.
For liberty, as they say, really is indivisible. Once you their right to break unjust laws then you abandon the basis on which most democratic liberties were won in the first place. fend the NGA, and who went to prison in the past rather than reveal defenders of democracy.
There is a widely known saying about the Guardian. This is that after long deliberation and hand wringing it always comes down on the side of repression 'regretfully'. It believes in slavery as long as the slavemasters should use softer whips.
is a fitting comment on the paper that started as a mouthpiece of nineteenth century Liberalism. But liberalism, scared of the organised labour movement. and of most standard rule a journalist have Journalism and the to people whose activities The poliçe charges For any other that deserves