The Yukon News' editor and publisher are going to court to try to overturn a "bedrock principle of journalism” in order to protect their own assets.

In an application filed earlier this summer, the Yukon News demanded that CBC Yukon radio reporter Nancy Thomson hand over confidential notes and recordings taken during her 2004 investigation into prescription drug abuse in Watson Lake.

The newspaper is also demanding the CBC pay the cost of the court action.

Thomson has refused to hand over her notes. She has filed an affidavit saying the people she interviewed only spoke because she promised to protect them.

"These sources feared retribution, embarrassment and further marginalization and ostracism if they were identified,” she said of the "dozens” of people she interviewed in the town of 1,600 people.

The paper's court application marks the first time one Canadian media organization has taken another to court to reveal an anonymous source – usually it is a principle which media associations pile on to protect.

"Honouring a promise to a confidential source is a bedrock principle of journalism,” Fred Kozak, the president of the Canadian Media Lawyers' Association and CBC counsel, told the Star last week, "even in circumstances where the information is sought by another news organization defending itself against a defamation lawsuit.”

That is the circumstance the News currently finds itself in, after publishing an editorial written by editor Richard Mostyn, who cribbed his information entirely from Thomson's series about drug and alcohol abuse in Watson Lake.

Long-time Watson Lake physician Said Secerbegovic was also named in Thomson's report, but it was the News' unsourced, secondhand article the doctor took issue with.

He claims the editorial piece caused him professional and personal harm, and is suing the newspaper for defamation.

Thomson's series revealed extensive prescription drug use in the B.C.-Yukon border town. One of the men she interviewed was later found dead with a combination of antidepressants, anti-psychotics and painkillers in his system.

He and another man who was convicted on manslaughter charges are the only two interviewees whose names have ever been made public, while the rest remain protected by Thomson.

"The individuals I interviewed did not want to be identified,” she wrote in her own submission to the court.

"... I reassured them that the story was about the overarching problems in Watson Lake and I promised these individuals that their identities would not be disclosed. In some cases, that arrangement was explicit, and in others, in my belief, understood.”

It took Thomson, a 25-year veteran in the news business, several months to collect the information for her story, according to her affidavit, and the "frank, honest responses” she eventually got out of people depended on a promise of absolute secrecy.

In some cases, she said, she had to promise to distort interviewees' voices to ensure they wouldn't be recognized.

She concluded by saying that revealing her sources would not only destroy her own ability to work in the community, but for other reporters as well.

"I believe that the ultimate effect of such disclosure is that matters of public interest in smaller communities will remain hidden and therefore ignored,” Thomson said in her affidavit.

According to the application filed by the News, Mostyn and publisher Steve Robertson would go so far as to put Thomson's interviewees on the stand to prove what Mostyn wrote about Secerbegovic was true.

When lawyers for the CBC offered to give the News copies of Thomson's notes with the names blacked out, the paper's lawyer, David Sutherland, said that wasn't good enough, and filed the application for her complete notes.

"Mr. Sutherland believes either the sources themselves or other eyewitnesses available through the sources will be required to testify,” according to court documents.

Last week, the Star reported that the CBC had refused to hand over the documents "lest they be sued again for defamation,” as stated in a recent judgment written by Justice Leigh Gower.

This is one of at least two misunderstandings about the case which have made it into the court record.

The other, also found in Gower's decision (given in response to an application to dismiss the case) show the judge thinks two of Thomson's sources died during her investigation.

In fact, only one man died, while another was found responsible for killing another man.

Robertson and Mostyn are both declining to comment on this story while it is before the courts.

The defamation case is scheduled to be heard in May 2011, but a hearing date for the disclosure application has not been set.