Edward Thomas Gillon: fighter for journalists’ rights

I hold this to be a point of journalistic honour from which no departure is possible.

I came across Edward Gillon while reading about his brother, who had a role in events in Victorian Wellington that I’m researching for what will probably be my next book. I found the older Gillon an intriguing figure in his own right.

Edward Thomas Gillon was born on the Isle of Man in 1842. He came to New Zealand with his family as a boy, and took up journalism as a career. In 1861, at the age of 19, he became chief reporter for the newly established Otago Daily Times.

Gillon moved to Wellington, where he worked for several years as a parliamentary reporter. From 1872 to 1875, and then from 1884 till his death, he was editor of the city’s Evening Post newspaper.

As well as being a skilled writer and successful editor, Gillon was a well-regarded Shakespearean scholar, a skilled horseman, and (not least, no doubt) a good cricketer. But he is remembered most for his determined defence of  a journalist’s right to maintain the confidentiality of his or her sources.

From the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography:

Gillon is remembered above all for his fight to uphold the principle that a journalist who acquires information honourably but confidentially should not disclose it or reveal his source. In 1885, in a case that scandalised Wellington, one prominent citizen was charged with aggravated assault on another man of equal social prominence. Gillon, who had been given information confidentially by the accused during his inquiries as a journalist, refused, first in the Resident Magistrate’s Court and later in the Supreme Court, to divulge what he had been told. Subpoenaed by the prosecution, he said from the witness box that he ‘declined to be forced into the position of a private detective, spy or informer’. When the presiding magistrate warned him that he was liable to imprisonment, he remained adamant (he was prepared to edit the Post from prison), and the prosecution did not force the issue.

In 1894, after the Evening Post had published details of a letter of resignation sent by Colonel F. J. Fox, commandant of the New Zealand forces, to the premier, Richard Seddon, Gillon refused to appear before a royal commission set up to investigate the leak. Gillon said that no penalties would induce him to disclose his source: ‘I hold this to be a point of journalistic honour from which no departure is possible’. The commission, as the courts of law had done earlier, reluctantly respected his fearless stand. Gillon was a founding member, and the first president for three years, of the New Zealand Institute of Journalists.

Leslie Verry. ‘Gillon, Edward Thomas’, from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 30-Oct-2012. URL: http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/2g9/gillon-edward-thomas

Edward Thomas Gillon died in Wellington on the 19 April 1896. An obituary by Ernest Hoben in the Sydney Daily Telegraph gives a glimpse of his personality and how it informed his work:

Mr Gillon’s literary style was powerful, trenchant, and lucid to the highest degree, and it was mercilessly analytical. Its fault was that the great power of the individual and show writer was too often fully exerted. It was always forte, but his was essentially a fighting spirit, dominated by a strong personality, united to the spirit of a crusader.

Gillon was a man of strong convictions, and a determination to uphold them even when the personal cost was high.