For a lawyer to demand that a journalist reveals the source behind the publication of a story is obscene. For this lawyer to demand such an obscenity when representing a Labour government minister in a court case carries more sinister undertones.

Is a journalist’s duty to protect a source now under threat by the government?

Are journalists now going to expect to be hauled to court and asked to say who gave them a particular tip to a story, if this story happens to be against the government or throws a minister in bad light?

Is it an attempt to scare journalists away from publishing stories that have a negative impact on the government or one of its ministers?

Is it an attempt to frighten potential sources from supplying information on issues that are harmful to the government or a member of the Cabinet?

Is it an attempt to muzzle the media?

Sources are sacrosanct in a journalist’s job and any journalist worth his or her salt knows that the identity of a source must be protected at all costs. Major scandals have been revealed by journalists who start an investigation following a morsel of information which grows into a fully-fledged story after the necessary verification process via other sources and official channels. Many journalists have special rapports with their sources, and the mutual trust that follows is often the foundation upon which they build their relationship.

The Labour government boasted so much about having been behind the introduction of the whistle-blower law. The attempt to intimidate a prominent journalist – and, by default, all the others – goes diametrically opposite to what Labour bragged about when it enacted this particular law and to the transparency it promised before the election. But we’ve come to understand that what Labour pledged before the election was just a way to get the votes it needed to be elected to power. Once it set foot in Castille, everything that had been said was quickly forgotten.

Just as much as lawyers cannot divulge the content of communications they have with a client – it’s called the attorney-client privilege – and cannot be compelled to testify about these exchanges in a court of law, journalists have a code of their own which they follow in their profession.

One crucial part of this code is the protection of sources.

For a lawyer representing a minister to even think of making a request for a journalist to reveal a source shows the low level the government is prepared to stoop to.