Wikileaks: Should sources always be protected?
Accusations flew that lives were endangered as a result and there have been demands for the identity of the whistleblower who provided the quarter of a million documents should be made known.
Not surprisingly Wikileaks are determined to keep their source鈥檚 identity a secret. But should journalists鈥 sources always be protected?
I spoke to film-maker Rob Lemkin who refused to hand over his exclusive interview with Nuon Chea, second in command to Cambodia鈥檚 notorious Pol Pot.
He explained why he decided not to hand over his material to the international court where Nuon Chea is on trial on charges of genocide.
On a different theme, and one which is likely to appear again on Over to You during the next six months, a new season of programmes gets underway on the World Service.
Called Extremes, it is a series of TV, radio and online reports in which 大象传媒 news will look at the deep divisions which still exist in the world. From December 2010 to June 2011, eight main themes will be explored from the extremes in climate, corruption, dying, education, to crime, business, waste and religion.
This week reports from the hottest and coldest places on the planet kicked off this wide ranging project . Steve Titherington, Global News Executive Editor is part of the 大象传媒 team behind Extreme World and he explained the thinking behind such a long season.
We hope you鈥檒l let us know what you think of Extremes as it develops over the coming weeks and months.
Finally, here鈥檚 a case where a listener felt that they would have been interested in more about a subject covered in Exchanges on the Frontier 鈥 a series where leading scientists discuss the ethical and philosophical aspects of their work.
The series was dubbed 鈥榦utstanding鈥 by Chris Green who emailed us from Jakarta, Indonesia and he highlighted the episode on Broadmoor secure hospital for addressing an important topic.
He noted that there is a longer version on the website, but suggested 鈥渆ven the full hour would have left more questions unanswered.鈥 鈥 he felt the subject could sustain an entire series.
Surely a sign of a successful programme, if it leaves listeners wanting to know more.
Rajan Datar is the presenter of Over To You
Over To You is your chance to have your say about the 大象传媒 World Service and its programmes. It airs at 00:40, 03:40 and 12:40 every Sunday (GMT).
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Comment number 1.
At 2nd Jan 2010, David Lilley wrote:Of course sources should always be protected or there would be no sources.
I entered this site to make a more general observation about the 大象传媒 coverage of news, as follows:
In my 59 years, most of which have been glued to 大象传媒 news, you have never used the term "objective knowledge".
I generally put it this way. There are three kinds of knowledge; objective, subjective and belief. Sorry, there is only one kind of knowledge and that is "objective knowledge".
You have so many well educated presenters and reporters, some having a PPE. But so many presentations are trashed because it is presented as here is one opinion and here is a contrary opinion, make your own mind up, we have been objective and presented both sides of the argument.
But this is rubbish because it fails to inform us of the truth. One or both of those two sides of the argument may be false.
Worse than that. You knew when you picked party A and party B that they could be relied upon to the give the two extremes when you knew all along what was the truth/objective knowledge. But thanks to your pseudo-detached style of presentation you only served to heat up both extremes when you could have imparted truth and brought the two extremes closer together and nearer to the truth.
You know what truth is, "correspondance with the facts". You also know that the public do not know about Taski and Popper.
Please would you go forward with a bent for informing and educating and shake off the misinforming that is propogated by a persuasion that all knowledge is opinion.
Worse than this, you have reinforced some taboos preventing honest debate. Lord Young was prevented from stating a truth, it is not allowed to say that northerners could get on their bike when Poles can get on a plane, teenage pregnancy has always got to be about our failure to provide sex education and nothing to do with social housing queues, education failure cannot be due to failed parents but only due to lack of funding, LATS have not been mentioned for three years, none could connect that the National Front, and similar, were in breach of a law dating back some 35 years, none could speak that it was wrong for one 21 year old to start his career with 拢30,000 of debt whilst another with slightly poorer parents would have no debt, none could mention that "the most vulnerable in society" were insulated from the recession by above RPI and CPI benefit rises, etc.
Taboos about broadcasting the truth do not serve honest debate.
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