By that I mean Ken Peters was found guilty of civil contempt and was assigned to pay legal costs, but but wasn't otherwise fined or given a jail sentence.

Here are a couple story links:

CTV.ca: Reporter found guilty of contempt of court (video attached with remarks from Peters)

CP story via globeandmail.com: Reporter guilty in contempt case

For background, Peters had done some stories in 1995 on problems at St. Elizabeth's Villa, a nursing home operation.

Some people had given him confidential documents, and during a civil trial (the nursing home as plaintiffs, various defendants), the nursing home had him subpoenaed to reveal the name of a source who had leaked him those documents.

Peters dodged a bit of a bullet on Friday when a former Hamilton alderman admitted he had been the source.

I only have the news coverage to go on, but this is interesting from Justice David Crane of Ontario Superior Court:

Crane said he concluded that those “who are in the business of selling the news” employ journalists to search out newsworthy information using as a means undertakings of confidentiality to sources.

There is a newsroom culture that media employers put personal onus on journalists when they promise to protect a source's confidentiality, the judge said.

“It is all very well for the employer and the educator to say the protection of source is a matter for the individual conscience of the journalist,” Judge Crane said in his ruling. “When they also say any journalist who has revealed a source will never again be employed in a newsroom, the oppressive nature of this culture on the individual has been the cause of the very real turmoil of Mr. Peters that he has been in for the last two weeks.”

Here are some second-hand words from Peters:

At Tuesday's hearing, Peters said obeying the court would mean breaking a central tenet of his profession.

"You protect your confidential sources against all else," he said. "Not taking that position would be akin to resigning from my craft and a job I love."

Describing his choice as one between respecting the court, and staying true to his career, Peters said his decision was clear. But it was also his own.

"In my view, it would be like writing a resignation letter to the Spectator," Peters told the court. "If I was looked upon as giving up a confidential source, I would never be able to walk back into a newsroom."

Call me crazy, but I read Peters words as saying he wouldn't be able to look himself in the eye, not that he was worried about being blackballed.

Obviously, that's not how the learned judge read it.

For the learned judge and others, here's my thoughts on why journalists would risk jail rather than reveal a source to whom they'd promised confidentiality.

There is a "personal onus" on the journalist in a confidential source situation, because they've entered into an oral contract that they will receive confidential information from their source in return for keeping the source's identity confidential.

That promise isn't granted for trivial reasons. It could be that revealing the source's identity could put their life or livelihood in danger.

The promise has to be weighed against a 'public interest' test; that it is in the public interest for this information to become known,that it can only be obtained by promising confidentiality, and that it isn't against the public interest to make a promise of confidentiality to obtain it.

(In case you're wondering, I think public interest is the ethical bedrock on which journalism's principles are built.)

Journalism should be as transparent as possible. People should know where the journalist got their information from, and if we say a confidential source, they should be able to trust us that such confidentiality was granted for a very good reason.

Once the promise is made, the other part of credibility is keeping your word.

When journalists go back on a promise of confidentiality, they then weaken the credibility of that promise for all journalists.

Ultimately, society will be less informed if that happens; and it won't be about trivial, nonsensical junk food news. It will be about the important stuff.

For those reasons, I salute Mr. Peters (whom I don't know) for sticking to his principles.

If you want to see some CBC rules for anonymous sources and promising confidentiality, click here.