Herald Sun editor Peter Blunden
is in a tough spot. He faces the prospect of his top political
journalists, Michael Harvey and Gerard McManus, going to jail for contempt of court.

Of
course, Blunden’s dilemma isn’t nearly as bad as that facing Harvey and
McManus, who yesterday stood firm in front of Melbourne’s County Court
chief judge Michael Rozenes and declined to reveal their source for a
story that severely embarrassed the Howard Government last year.

McManus’s
previous fame had been limited to last year’s federal election
campaign, when he took up – and lost – a fitness challenge posed by
Mark Latham. Latham won the running race, while McManus ended up with a
bung leg. He was also responsible for the Hun’s outrageous anti-Greens
beat-up last year which subsequently got lashed by the Press Council.

Both he and Harvey are
regarded as straight shooters, and the government’s vigorous pursuit of
this case sends a strong message to the media that it will clamp down
on the free exchange of information it sees as embarrassing wherever it
can. The current cases against the journalists and the public servant
the government claims is their source is essentially an exercise to
cover the backside of failed veterans affairs minister Danna Vale.

On the eve of their court appearance, Harvey and McManus received support from Reporters Without Borders,
which warned that forcing journalists to reveal this kind of
information “would constitute an extremely dangerous precedent for
press freedom in the country.”

But they should not expect much
support from Joe Public – unless Blunden winds up a big campaign on
their behalf in a bid to sway public opinion. When we asked our readers
to weigh in on the contentious issue of protecting sources, they came
down firmly in favour of the law over the code of ethics. Check out the
feedback on site here.

This is what Reporters Without Borders has to say:

“The
Australian justice system has to understand that, without the
protection of sources guaranteed to journalists before the courts,
nobody in possession of sensitive information would any longer dare to
make it available.”

And nor, perhaps, would many journalists dare publish it.