Michael asked:

Just a question on journalistic ethics. How extensive is a journalist's duty to protect his or her
sources? I personally believe that in most cases, normal moral reasoning would not justify the
breaking of a confidentiality promise. How would this relate to moral theories such as utilitarianism or
kantian ethics?

============

The journalist doesn't have a legal duty to protect sources, but a professional obligation which makes
journalism possible. If the sources knew that exposure was likely they wouldn't be keen to pass on
information. The extent to which a journalist wants to go to protect his sources will differ. The courts
can require disclosure of a source if the public interest is at stake, or to prevent a crime. It is possible
for a journalist to refuse to comply with a court order to disclose a source if he is strongly committed
to confidentiality of sources.

It isn't clear what 'normal moral reasoning is'. However, a Kantian believes that it is always morally
impermissible to break a promise because you cannot universalise the maxim that one should make
a false promise on pain of incoherence. This commitment to what we can rationally do is something
Kant held rigidly to, to the extent that he held that if a murderer asks you where your friend is, and
you are protecting him in your house, you should not lie. However, moral reasoning would normally
be thought to take into account all the facts. It might well be in the public interest to disclose a source
especially if maintaining confidentiality leads to crime. Kant's case of the murderer is strongly
disagreed with by everyone. It is difficult to see how a journalist can be criticised morally if he
discloses a source who could lead to information on terrorists when there is imminent danger of a
terrorist attack.

The utilitarian, on the other hand, has to calculate utilities which, is to weigh up benefits and harms.
He would have to measure the amount of harm caused by breaking an agreement. This would not
just be harmful to him personally and to his source, but to the whole of the profession because it
would lead to difficulty in acquiring information. Lots of people would be harmed personally and
professionally and this has to be weighed against the number of people and nature of the crime
disclosure is supposed to avoid.

Precise sums are going to be impossible, but utilitarianism seems to reflect the fact that a journalist
might find himself in a moral predicament. Moral reasoning might justify the breaking of a
confidentiality promise, but it will depend on the type of person and his commitment and the nature of
the situation.

Rachel Browne

"Just" a question? Zowie, so is "what is DNA?"! I don't even know how to approach a quantitative
answer to moral questions, and I don't know anyone who claims to, these days. The classical
approach is, as you say, utilitarianism, where you add up "good" and subtract "bad", a la Bentham. It
certainly seems impossible to disagree with your statement above, but I don't have a clue as to what
it means, really. "Most cases"? "Normal" reasoning? As far as Kant goes, methods for the application
of his general rules to specific cases are certainly not something hewas concerned with, leaving us in
the same dilemma. I could give you my own ethical principles, but they are also pretty general.

Really, the only way I know to approach this kind of very specific question is first to decide on your
general ethical principles, as general as you can, and then just fumble your way to a specific answer,
and hope you get it. Look at the results and see if they conform to your ethics. If they do, I guess
you're ok... if not, well it's back to the drawing board: start from the samegeneral principles and redo
the answer. In other words, we're talking about a painful kind of process that the early cognitivists
called "TOTE": Test, Operate, Test, Exit. Almost, but not quite, a fancy name for trial and error... the
difference is that you're guided by general principles.

Good luck.

Steven Ravett Brown