SECTOR 1 Scores: Individual scores: 1 Country does not meet indicator 2 Country meets only a few aspects of indicator 3 Country meets some aspects of indicator 4 Country meets most aspects of indicator 5 Country meets all aspects of the indicator Average score: 1.9 (2005 = n/a; 2007 = n/a; 2009 = 1.0; 2011 = 1.4) 1.6 Confidential sources of information are protected by law and/or the courts. There are no laws guaranteeing the protection of confidential sources of information. Protecting sources is an ethical issue for journalists. Fortunately, in a few cases, the judiciary has acted protectively and judges have accepted that journalists cannot reveal their sources. In cases where the prosecutor demands that a source be revealed, the journalist will be obliged to do so. In a situation where the journalist refuses, he or she will be declared a hostile witness. However the court cannot force anyone to reveal a source and a journalist cannot be put in jail for not revealing his or her source. “It is the state that has to make a case against you; it is not for you to make a case for the state. That’s why the DIS and other officers detain, harass and persecute, to elicit information from people, as they know that you can’t do this.” “The former head of the Botswana Development Corporation (BDC) is suing our paper for publishing a story. There was a forensic body that published a report which had implications for her department. So the issue was around where we got the report from. It went back and forth between her lawyer and myself, but they respected that I could not reveal where I got the report. It’s ongoing. The court upheld the right to not reveal the source.” “It’s important that we do have a law as we cannot depend on a judge to make that ruling. So there is no law in place but there are court procedures which protect confidentiality of the source, as no one can be forced to disclose the source.” AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER Botswana 2014 19