OSAKA (Kyodo) The Osaka High Court has reversed a lower court decision that ordered TV journalist Soichiro Tahara to submit a recording of his interview with a senior Foreign Ministry official as evidence in a lawsuit over remarks he made on a talk show about two women abducted by North Korea.
According to the high court's written decision, dated Thursday and delivered to both the plaintiffs and the defendant in the suit Friday, presiding Judge Kiyozo Yasuhara said journalists need to protect their sources to ensure freedom of news gathering.
If the sources are disclosed, journalists would be unable to gather information freely in the future, Yasuhara said, noting that the "social value of protecting news sources is important" and that Tahara's submission of the recording was not indispensable.