In England, there is no privilege for a journalist in regard to his source of information. Recently, there have been some cases in which journalists had to face the legal consequences of their professional obligation.
In 1963, two journalists one from the Daily Sketch and the other from the Daily Mail preferred to go to jail for defying the order of the Radcliffe Tribunal. They refused to disclose the source of their information about the leakage of certain Admiralty secrets in the famous “Vassal Scandal.”
When the case was reported to the High Court, the Lord Chief Justice Parker sentenced both the correspondents to six months imprisonment, though recognising the conflict between the sense of honor of a journalist and his duty to the State.
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After the Vassal case there was a move in England to confer legal immunity on journalists, but nothing substantive has been done so far. In 1971, a BBC reporter went to jail rather than disclose the identity of an IRA member interviewed by him.
The House of Lords has ruled as recently as August, 1980 that Granada Television, one of the major commercial companies of Britain, must name the informant relating to the case against state owned British Steel Corporation.
Though Grande Television maintained it would appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, the House of Lord’s decision was widely regarded as a major setback for investigative reporting in Britain, already badly hampered by stringent libel and contempt laws and security curbs.
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In Australia it has been held that a journalist has no privilege against the disclosure of information to a Royal Commission, which has the power to demand such disclosure under the Evidence Act, 1928.