Companion website for
COMPARATIVE MEDIA LAW & ETHICS
by TIM CROOK
to be published by Routledge on 15th December 2009
For details of the book, please visit Routledge.
Author's profile at Goldsmiths, University of London
What is the relevance of the UK Official Secrets Act (1989) for journalists?
Section 5 of the Official Secrets Act 1989 makes it clear that a journalist commits an offence if he discloses information, without lawful authority, knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that it is protected against disclosure.
The journalist must have received the information from a crown servant or government contractor without lawful authority or in confidence.
The journalist can still be prosecuted if he/she received the information from a middle party.The prosecution has to prove that the information was damaging and that the journalist knew it was damaging.
The following classes of information are protected by the act:
1. security and intelligence,
2. defence,
3. international relations,
4. crime,
5. information on government phone-tapping, interception of letters or other communications,
6. information entrusted in confidence to other states or international organizations.Section 8 makes it an offence to fail to comply with an ‘official’ order to return a document, where it would be an offence under the Act if the document were disclosed.
In practice the UK state has tended to prosecute civil servants and intelligence officers who have decided to be ‘whistleblowers.’
In 2008 the case against Foreign Office official Derek Pasquill collapsed after he was accused of leaking documents relating to Government policy on extraordinary rendition and on radical Islam. However, in 2007 Cabinet office communications officer David Keogh was jailed for 6 months for leaking a confidential memo detailing talks between former US President George W Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.. The House of Commons researcher who received the memo, Leo O’Connor was jailed for 3 months.
