Taylor Auerbach revealed the source of confidential information given to Seven and him

There was one key issue missed in the reports on Taylor Auerbach’s demolition derby in court last week – and it is bad for journalism.

In all the oohing and eeking over Taylor Auerbach’s evidence in court last week – throwing hand-grenades at Channel 7 in the Bruce Lehrmann defamation case – one big thing has been missed.

How odd, when it was a betrayal of journalism to make any whistleblower now think twice about handing over confidential information.

Auerbach, a former producer on Seven’s Spotlight program, didn’t just make journalism seem a sleazebag profession, with his tales of being rewarded with a pay-rise and promotion after paying for prostitutes to lure Lehrmann into granting Seven an interview about his dealings with Brittany Higgins, the former Liberal colleague who accused him of rape.

Or his claims of a Channel 7 lawyer allegedly getting him to destroy incriminating documents, and executives paying for Lehrmann’s cocaine.

Taylor Auerbach has made journalism seem a sleazebag profession. Picture: Nikki Short

(For the record, Channel 7 and Lehrmann deny all that, and I work at Sky News with the lawyer Auerbach named and consider him more likely to dance naked in court than do what Auerbach claims. Lehrmann also denies any rape.)

No, what’s missed in the reports on Auerbach’s demolition derby in court last week is even worse for journalism.

He also revealed the source of confidential information given to Seven and him.

It was Lehrmann, he declared, who’d (allegedly) brought Seven “about 500 pages of documents”. He’d seen some as they were copied by Lehrmann, who also sent him copies of Higgins’ private text messages.

There have been a lot of hand-grenades thrown at Channel 7 in the Bruce Lehrmann defamation case. Picture: Nikki Short

You might think it serves Lehrmann right to be outed.

He had no legal right to release this information, taken from police evidence for his criminal trial, which was later aborted.

(Again, Lehrmann insists on oath he was not the source, and Auerbach produced no evidence to confirm his allegation.)

But even if Lehrmann did give him that information, as background for his Spotlight interview, Auerbach is bound by the journalists’ code of honour – ha! – not to say so.

The journalists’ union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, has it in its “code of ethics”: “Where confidences are accepted, respect them in all circumstances.”

Australian journalists have gone to jail rather than betray their source. Yet Auerbach rushed to the Federal Court to reveal his, two days before the judge’s verdict was due. And no journalist has damned it? Like, it’s now kind-of expected?

Originally published as Taylor Auerbach revealed the source of confidential information given to Seven and him