Police Stupidity: "Official Secrets Act to force Guardian journalists to reveal Milly Dowler hacking source"

(Previous Stupidity: cartoon courtesy of The Times)

Daily Telegraph:
"Phone hacking: Guardian journalists told to reveal Milly Dowler hacking source"

"Journalists who helped to expose the phone hacking story could be forced to disclose their sources after the Metropolitan Police said it would seek a court order under the Official Secrets Act.

Link to Daily Telegraph

"The Guardian newspaper last night accused Scotland Yard of launching a 'vindictive and disproportionate' attack on journalism and said it would resist the “extraordinary demand” to the utmost.

"The Metropolitan Police is currently running two inquiries into allegations of phone hacking by the News of the World and claims of corrupt relationships between reporters and police officers."

"Tom Watson, a Labour MP and member of the culture, media and sport select committee, said:

“It is an outrageous abuse and completely unacceptable that, having failed to investigate serious wrongdoing at the News of the World for more than a decade, the police should now be trying to move against The Guardian which exposed this scandal.”

The Guardian:

"Threat to press freedom"

Link to The Guardian

"The latest threat to press freedom comes not as a result of the crimes of News of the World journalists, but from the foolishness of police officers charged with investigating those crimes. They have reached for the blunderbuss of the Official Secrets Act (1989) in a misguided attempt to obtain access to the sources of the information about the hacking of Milly Dowler obtained by Guardian journalists in their coverage of the scandal.

"... If the attorney general is inhibited from acting, and the police refuse to take advice from the DPP, then the matter will proceed to court. The journalists may be faced with the unhappy dilemma of having to consider whether to destroy their notes, were the court to [rule against them]. If they have promised their source(s) confidentiality, no doubt they will do so, and go to jail for contempt of court. 

"That will be an ironic tribute to the stupidity of Scotland Yard – a police service that fails to investigate criminal hackers, but puts in jail the journalists who exposed them."