Does he deserve our journalistic consideration?This is a jolly game. But now let’s consider the two Channel 4 reporters who have been under exceptional pressure to divulge the identities of four paratroopers who spoke to them when they were making a programme about Bloody Sunday. The Saville inquiry wants to subpoena the soldiers, so that the full truth about terrible events can be known. But the journalists are prepared to risk prison rather than break their undertaking to maintain the anonymity of their sources. As one of them, Alex Thomson, has said, “Protecting sources is not an ?a carte option”.Thomson is probably right. But if I were a clever barrister arguing this case, I might point out to the court how these noble rules are broken or bent by journalists themselves.

How we seem to invoke them or waive them according to fashion, and not to principle.. The forbidden island of Rum in Scotland, where visitors were once discouraged at the point of a gun, is to be used as the backdrop for a new version of a Castaway-style television series – but with a twist. “Each group of four contestants will spend a week building a series of adventurous experimental devices that will help them on their way.”They might have to build a hot air-balloon, send a message with Morse code, create a signal flare out of household chemicals, or power a dead radio to attract a rescue craft. The first team to successfully reach their escape craft will leave the island victorious.”A cautionary note was sounded by a contestant in the BBC Castaway series, who warned television companies to avoid “exploiting people for the sake of good television”. Ron Copsey, 45, who was one of 36 volunteers pitted against the elements and each other for a year on the Hebridean island of Taransay, accepted £16,000 in damages last week from the BBC and independent production company Lion TV.Mr Copsey said the programme had been edited in such a manner that he was portrayed as a violent drama queen who was argumentative, aggressive and a “nasty piece of work”, purely to make more exciting television.The former trainee counsellor, the first person to sue a docu-soap over a portrayal, said he hoped his victory would result in stricter guidelines to protect participants..

Maths and science lessons will be taught through video-conferencing links from September in an attempt to overcome teacher shortages. But it is now extending its range of courses after receiving approaches from teachers to help solve staffing shortages. The pilot scheme in Septemberwill operate in about half a dozen schools.The Southampton-based company’s next move will be to devise a modern foreign languages course, which is also a shortage subject.David Black, a director of the company, said: “The technology in itself is not the key to effective distance-learning. It is simply the medium used to link tutor and student.”About 200 schools and more than 1,000 students are already signed up for the courses in minority subjects and the company says their results are “at least as good and in some cases better than classroom-taught subjects”.Mr Black believes video-conferencing links will help to counter shortages of teachers and is recruiting teaching staff for his programme “It is an ideal way for them to work,” he said. “You’re dealing with A-level and AS-level students who are motivated to learn.”Lunchtime supervision and the 101 additional things teachers get caught up doing while they are at school are a thing of the past.