From reading the headline of this column, you might be forgiven for thinking that this will be all about some sort of professional turf war between those who arrest people for a living and those who write about it.

But sadly it isn’t. It’s about a recent ruling by Ontario Superior Justice Benjamin Glustein which dismissed a constitutional challenge to prevent undercover police from posing as journalists in order to extract information from individuals that they might not have given freely to the cops.

So what, you may be asking. If the police get information that could prove helpful in preventing crime or catching a criminal what’s the big deal?

The big deal is the chilling effect it can have on individuals who have a story to tell that’s in the public interest, but don’t want to risk incriminating themselves or someone close to them. Think about it. If you were a government scientist who had information about a threat to public health that you were required by law to keep under wraps, would you think twice before putting your career and possibly your freedom at risk because the “reporter” you talked to might actually be a cop?

And it gets worse. Two of the three incidents cited in the challenge dealt with OPP officers claiming to be reporters during Aboriginal protests at Ipperwash in 1995 and on Tyendinaga Mohawk territory in 2007.

In spite of some good-faith efforts, those of us in the news business don’t always do a good job covering Aboriginal issues, which can lead to a mistrust between journalists and the Native community. Add to that the spate of cops exploiting whatever trust the community may have for the press in order to gather information to either control or undermine their protests, we run the risk of further silencing a voice that we desperately need to hear.

When people choose to trust journalists it’s because our only vested interest is (or should be) in getting to the truth and sharing it with our readers/listeners/viewers. We write the story on the scientist to protect the public from harm. We interview Aboriginal protesters to help explain the intricacies behind issues which many of our readers may know little about.

All that is threatened when agents of the state use our rights to a free press, enshrined under Section 2 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to trick and cajole unsuspecting people into passing along information that they otherwise would never have considered telling the police.

The press cannot be truly free as long as there is doubt, created by governments, as to whom journalists are really working for: the public good, or the state. If we are seen as merely agents of the state then who in their right mind would trust a reporter with sensitive information? Instead of a free society, we risk becoming a Soviet-style state where you can never talk freely because you don’t know who you can trust, and who is working as an agent for the government.

So police, please drop the journalist act. Our freedom depends on it.