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Why journalists need public interest defense

09/04/2012

Thais Portilho-Shrimpton

**From CNN.comby Thais Portilho-ShrimptonJournalism is not as black and white as most people would like to believe. We ought to be able to see all shades of grey between the fresh revelations of email hacking by a Sky News reporter, the News International phone hacking scandal and other examples of journalists breaking the law to obtain stories.

The Guardian revealed last week that Sky News reporter Gerard Tubb illegally accessed emails from the personal account of John Darwin, also known as "canoe man", who, in 2007, pleaded guilty to faking his own death.

Darwin's wife, Anne, was due to stand trial for deception in 2008, but the reporter had collected a sufficient amount of emails, he believed, to crush her defense at trial.

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