Can journalists influence the events on which they are reporting? This is not just an issue for financial journalists - there are similar questions being asked about the terrorism stories we have been fed since 9/11.
Have the public, and potential juries, been told too much, too early, as crime and security reporters exploit their relationships with the police, MI5, and assorted Whitehall spin doctors? The home affairs select committee thinks these are questions worth posing - and last week some of them were lobbed in my direction.
If I have a message it is: get real. If a senior source tells you that at dawn a significant terrorist plot is going to be broken in Birmingham by a clutch of arrests, do you stop to wonder why you are being given this tip-off or agonise over the impact your report may have on the local Muslim communities? You would be a poor journalist if you only did the latter, but an irresponsible one if these thoughts didn't occupy some of your time as you rush to the scene.
This is not a hypothetical scenario. It happened in February 2007, and led to recriminations between the various police and security agencies involved in tracking and arresting a cell planning to kidnap and behead a Muslim soldier in the British army.
But rather than focus on journalists, it might be more fruitful to examine the sometimes disjointed relationships between and within the counter-terrorism community, and hold home secretaries to account for the eagerness with which they seek out a camera as soon as an arrest is made.
This is not to say that reporters and newsdesks have not been guilty of embellishing an initial nugget of information; nor that Britain's contempt rules have not become disturbingly elastic. And it doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to detect an agenda at work in some of the leaks that have emanated from Scotland Yard about Commander Ali Dizaei.
But, for all the millions that the police spend on their press operations in an effort to manage the news flow, enterprising journalists will always find a way to exploit personal relationships to get stories. Sometimes, it is true, money is involved. But far more often it is based on trust. So, ask as many questions as you like - but don't shoot the messenger.
· Jon Silverman is professor of media and criminal justice at the University of Bedfordshire and a former BBC home affairs correspondent
