Protecting sources of embedded journalists

The secrecy around the journalist source protection safeguard is not always in the public interest, especially for the embedded journalist in times of war. The first section of this paper assesses the secrecy aspect of source protection in the context of embedded journalism and finds it as detrimental to the public interest because of the often nefarious motivations of government and military sources in the dissemination of fake news and propaganda. This paper then examines how tensions in embedded journalism have been managed in three legal paradigms in local, regional, and international courts and tribunals "” the United States Supreme Court, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the European Court of Human Rights. It concludes that the European Court of Human Rights provides the most pertinent approach by considering the behaviour of the source in a broad range of criminal contexts.