An interesting, mildly persistent preface to the evidence of journalist witnesses to the Hutton Inquiry in London last week went unreported by the media,writes John Waters.
The evidence of Michael Evans, the journalist on the London Times who published the name of Dr David Kelly in that newspaper, serves as an example. "I personally," he attested, "never had any interest in seeking the source for Andrew Gilligan's story, although there was obviously tremendous interest in finding the source. I was quite interested in finding maybe the department where this information had come from, but I was not interested in the source.
"However, when the Ministry of Defence statement was made, it transformed everything completely. By then it was not a question of finding the BBC's source, it was a question of trying to identify the Ministry of Defence official who had come forward. In my view, that was two separate things. Whether the man was the source or not was neither here nor there. The point was an official had come forward."
This Jesuitical distinction touches on the unexplored core of this affair.
A central issue to be examined by the Hutton Inquiry is whether the publicising of Dr Kelly's identity was a factor in his death. Much energy has been expended in examining the roles of the Ministry of Defence and the Downing Street spin-doctors. But, factually speaking, it was the media that revealed the identity of the source of Andrew Gilligan's report on the Today programme, which is why Lord Hutton asked several journalists to explain how they came to hear Dr Kelly's name.
But one aspect of this was not pursued by Mr James Dingemans QC, despite being raised implicitly by several journalist witnesses: the responsibility of the media generally to protect the identity of someone who has placed himself at risk by co-operating with journalists.
Implicit in Mr Evans's semantic distinction is the idea that there would have been something wrong in expressly reporting the identity of the BBC source.
He suggested that, in naming Dr Kelly, he was not revealing the identity of another journalist's source, but rather that of an official embroiled in a dispute between the government and the BBC who had " come forward" within the Ministry of Defence.
That the BBC's source and the MoD official are the same person is, by this logic, a coincidence.
The fact that, in "coming forward" , Dr Kelly was admitting to being Andrew Gilligan's source, but in the expectation that his confidentiality would be maintained, is skirted over.
By coming forward, albeit in what he thought was confidence, did Dr Kelly somehow release the media from their own conventions with regard to the protection of sources?
Let us be frank. The principle of protecting sources has always had more to do with expediency than principle.
Journalists assert their willingness to go to jail rather than "betray" a source, not primarily because of sensitivity towards sources but so that the trust of unnamed sources can be preserved. If a journalist were once to reveal the identity of a source, that journalist would be finished as a reporter, because no source could ever trust him again.
But this principle applies to journalism in general as much as to individual reporters.
Even when uninvolved journalists become aware, through gossip or happenstance, of the identity of a source in a celebrated story, the convention is that this is not something to be revealed. Clearly, if the identities of sources were to become fair game for journalism in general to pursue, this would deter other potential sources from coming forward, and would restrict journalists generally in doing their jobs.
So far, the Hutton Inquiry appears to have taken it as read that, whereas civil servants and spin-doctors should have been subject to what is a journalistic convention, the media had no obligation simply to refuse to make public Dr Kelly's name.
It is assumed that the media were sandwiched between the public's clamouring to be told who the BBC source was and the government's desire to out him. There is, of course, in this regard as in others, a certain unprecedented element to this affair.
Rarely has the source of a journalistic report become a matter of such public curiosity. But the convention of protecting sources is no more a matter of public appetite than of governmental responsibility, and there was a time when journalists would simply have refused to have anything to do with revealing the identity of a colleagues's source.
I repeat: the altered culture of the media in response to market pressures is the smoking gun in the Kelly affair.