Fidelity is also an obligation, to the journalist's ethics in particular truthtelling. Beneficence could be applied to helping law enforcement. As the decision at hand consists of two mutually exclusive options, one of these obligations would need to be overriding. It is most likely that for the journalist this would be to communicate all of the information in keeping with the journalistic code of ethics. This approach, however, does not represent a resolution of the ethical dilemma so much as it represents a cop-out. The decision as to the absolute obligation is too subjective. If the decision-maker was going to "go with his gut," there was no need to treat the issue as an ethical dilemma in the first place. The notion of an ethical dilemma is given short shrift by a system that argues there is a dilemma but the answer is to do whatever you want and argue...
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