This summer, while the front pages of the red top newspapers were full of the latest developments in the Big Brother Household, a less public but an arguably more important drama was unfolding.
On 27 June the House of Lords concluded that Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) should provide information to Ashworth Security Hospital which would reveal the identity of one of its journalistic sources. Thirteen days later, on 10 July, the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, the Independent and Reuters refused to comply with an order of the Court of Appeal to hand over documents to the Belgian brewer Interbrew which would similarly reveal the identity of their sources.
Clearly the journalist's moral obligation to protect confidential sources of information will occasionally place the journalist in direct conflict with the courts, a fine or imprisonment being the usual penalty for the refusal to obey the rule of law, but it was the scale of the defiance that was unprecedented. This was
