The contempt for professional journalism demonstrated by the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court is intolerable. Journalism is not a garbage job and its professionals are not the only Spanish citizens whose testimony is not valid in court and, nevertheless, this has been the attitude adopted by the Chamber, to the point that the president, Andrés Martínez Arrieta, goes so far as to warn a journalist “not to threaten him” when he shows him the moral dilemma he finds himself in. He claims that his source was not the State Attorney General, but professional secrecy prevents him from disclosing the authentic revealer in court, because that is what article 20.1.d of the Constitution establishes. The judge’s reaction is to cut off any possible testimony or simple clarification, accusing the journalist of wanting to harm him, the judge!
It is the attitude of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court that is causing malicious damage to journalism, serious and perverse damage. Journalists, like any other citizen, are subject to the laws and have an obligation to tell the truth in court. And, if a judge believes that this journalist is intentionally lying, he has the obligation to initiate the corresponding criminal proceedings. What would happen in the hypothetical case in which the court condemns the attorney general for revealing secrets? In front of the court, all the journalists who had testified and declared that they could assure that García Ortiz was not the author of the leak would have been lying. But the journalist cannot appear before the judge as a witness. There’s no way. The only thing you are authorized to do is maintain the secrecy of its source, an essential element for the protection of sensitive information.
What the Criminal Chamber did will have very serious repercussions on the practice of journalism and on the relationship between professional journalism and some levels of justice. The Chamber has opened a trial against journalism, denying any credit to journalist witnesses. We must be the journalists themselves who clarify once and for all that the exercise of journalism does not authorize lies. And that judges cannot deny us prestige in the same condition as any other witness. Years and years of scrupulous professional practice cannot be swept away in an instant, destroying the reputation of people who have demonstrated that they carry out their activities with relevant ability and application. Years and years of struggle to maintain high standards of professional journalism cannot be sunk in a few days due to the lack of respect of some judges for a profession that society increasingly needs every day to avoid one of the great dangers of our time: instilling in citizens the idea that the truth does not exist.
