A punishment for the BBC for taking notes

The BBC will have to pay Gerry Adams €100,000 because a news report accused him of approving the murder of an IRA infiltrator. The British press is generally concerned about the verdict and criticizes it, considering it a threat to investigative journalism. But what the judge has submitted to a jury is not the veracity of this information, but rather whether the BBC made it clear that it was what an anonymous source claimed, or whether it was understood that the television station considered him the instigator of that murder. In the excellent book Don't say anything, by Patrick Radden Keefe, shows that Gerry Adams's claim to have never been a member of the IRA is met with a host of facts suggesting otherwise, but journalism must be extremely scrupulous. The BBC, during the hearings, claimed to have corroborated the anonymous source's account with five other people, but this was not revealed in the report, and one can't help but wonder why, given that it reinforced the narrative.

While I understand the annoyance the ruling may have caused, I do, however, see something positive: it attacks one of the dirty tricks journalism often falls into. In Catalonia, we know this very well: an anonymous police source provides information that later proves unsubstantiated, but the media outlets collude with it write it up in such a way that their readers have no doubt that it's a truly revealed truth. The only solution to avoid this oversight (or whatever it was) by the BBC is to be much more thorough in the investigation and, above all, to ensure the public understands what constitutes factual information and what constitutes subjective attribution. And, if there is an anonymous source, they must be able to assess their potential conflicts of interest. Anything else is just throwing stones and hiding your hand, even if you're right.