The subpoena of the U.S. District Court judge compels Estévez to hand over 23 documents, including e-mails, tape recording transcripts and reporters notes. Stories on the same subject had already been published in The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News and Insight Magazine, whose reporters were also subpoenaed to turn over their notes to the court.
Estévezs attorneys appealed to the judge to annul his order, but there has been no response so far. The judge acted in response to a plea from the attorneys representing Laredo National Bank of Laredo, Texas, owned by Carlos Hank Rhon of Mexico, named in the published reports.
IAPA President Robert J. Cox said that "this order is a direct interference in newsgathering activity that seriously threatens the free flow of information and is a violation of the right of reporters to keep their news sources confidential."
Cox, assistant editor of The Post and Courier, Charleston, South Carolina, added that material gathered during the course of investigative reporting is confidential. He said that people should be able to feel secure that when they give information to a journalist on the basis of confidentiality such confidentiality will be respected. Otherwise, the peoples right to be informed is violated and the very practice of journalism threatened.
The IAPA contention on the issue is upheld in Principle
3 of the Declaration of Chapultepec, which states that "no journalist may
be forced to reveal his or her sources of information." This is also reinforced
in the Inter-American Declaration of Principles of Freedom of Expression.
FUENTE: nota.texto7
