Ethics: Breaking A Confidence

Few contracts are more inviolable than a reporter's pledge of confidentiality. Some journalists have even been willing to go to jail to protect that principle. But are there occasions when public interest demands that a news organization disclose the name of a confidential source?

After hearing Oliver North's testimony, Newsweek decided yes. North had justified the Administration's widespread deception of Congress by claiming that members often leaked sensitive information. When pressed for examples, he cited stories before the 1986 U.S. raid on Libya and ones detailing the 1985 interception of an Egyptian plane carrying the hijackers of the Achille Lauro. That prompted Newsweek to disclose one of the sources for its October 1985 cover story on the Achille Lauro. "Details of the interception," it noted, "were leaked by none other than North himself."

It was hardly a secret in Washington that North had provided information on many stories to a variety of news organizations, including TIME. "Ollie was the biggest leaker in this Administration," one official told the Wall Street Journal. But no publication had ever fingered him as the source for a specific story until Newsweek decided that his accusations against Congress warranted such a disclosure. "When a guy lies on national television, at that point you have to reassess the rules," said Newsweek's media writer Jonathan Alter. "Given these unusual circumstances, we felt an obligation to point out to our readers that North himself was a frequent source of Administration leaks," said Editor in Chief Richard Smith, who decided to run the story over objections from the magazine's Washington bureau.

To many reporters who stake their livelihood on the trust of their sources, the precedent was worrisome. "If I gave somebody my word that I would not quote him or identify him, then I would not quote or identify him, period," says former TV Correspondent Marvin Kalb, who is now director of Harvard's Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. "You can't eat off a source's plate and then later say you don't like the food," comments Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh. Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau Chief Nicholas Horrock, a former Newsweek correspondent, felt compelled to promise his reporters that the paper would never compromise their pledges of confidentiality. Said he: "It's a watershed change in policy to name your own sources. It's outrageous."

Part of the reason is practical: a news organization that breaks a confidence may find it more difficult to get information in the future. "Often the only way to get that sort of account is to promise anonymity," says one upset Newsweek Washington correspondent. There is also a legal reason: judges may be more likely to force a news organization to reveal a source if in the past it has made such disclosures voluntarily. "If a judge knows that a particular institution has been less than consistent, he could be influenced by that prior practice," says James Goodale, a New York City attorney.