Journalism is about information.
Specifically, journalism is about revealing information.
More specifically still, journalism should be about revealing information which otherwise may not be revealed.
So Wikileaks is
A Good Thing. Right?
Certainly it would seem so. The revelations following the publication of war logs were superb and shone megawatt spotlights into
murky corners of world politics that Tony Blair and George W Bush had sought to keep in the shadows for eternity.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is to be praised for his all-consuming effort to bring hidden information out into the open to bear the full brunt of public scrutiny. For too long, the '
War on Terror' has been used as an excuse to 'classify' information and stop us from worrying our pretty little heads about it.
Now we have a third major installment as the
US Embassy Cables are being picked over across the globe. But it doesn't feel like a satisfying part of the trilogy. In fact I feel very similar emotions to those experienced when watching X-Men 3 or Spiderman 3 - I had high hopes, some of the old excitement is still there but it has lost its sparkle and originality.
Perhaps it is because much of what is now being revealed is so banal, perhaps even downmarket. Much of it is not what anyone would label primary evidence but more gossip and intrigue - the kind of circumstantial evidence which would have little credence in a court of law.
What do we really know? Well here's three examples:
- Prince Andrew is cocky and rude.
- Hilary Clinton thinks rich Saudis are bankrolling terrorism.
- That the US fears that Qatar has undue influence over al-Jazeera
And here's my reaction to hearing all three bits of info
- Well he's an old school royal so it's no surprise.
- Considering the US have pointed hundreds of times that Osama Bin Laden is of Saudi descent that is not ground breaking.
- The US, and other western powers, actually fear that countries like Qatar have a global media brand as it means they no longer have to confirm to standards of journalism set in the US and other Western powers
There is still great information in the latest data dump. Take the highlighting of America's
attempts to control the
International Panel on Climate Change.
But it's still ultimately gossip. We are hearing one side of a conversation without context of what questions were being asked, what scenarios were being set. It is akin to judging a Twitter debate by looking not at a hashtag to get all views but only at one user's feed.
I want transparency but we all must recognise that at times, a conversation between two people can be private, otherwise nothing in life would ever be planned for fear that the planning process would be leaked to undermine the outcome. Judging which of those moments should be private is tricky but it seems at the moment that no-one is even attempting to make that call.
The World Wide Web is becoming a place where journalists can investigate and publish in a way that seeks to circumvent the wall of PR and legislation that aims to prevent some truths being uncovered.
openDemocracy and
HelpMeInvestigate are two great examples of that.
Such is the success of sites like these that the winner of this year's
Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism was
Clare Sambrook - a journalist who had the bulk of her investigative work published on openDemocracy.
But the standard response to all allegations in the Cables is denial and there is little proof one way or another to currently force a change in that stance. Perhaps they should be run through helpmeinvestigate before publication to stiffen them up a bit?
I labelled the cables potentially downmarket as it shares some characteristics with classic tabloid tales. Take the
Lord Triesman sting: Get a pretty young woman to tape him making outrageous claims and print them. Whether or not he believed them or simply grandstanding in front of an audience was irrelevant to the Mail on Sunday.
To go further back, look at the News of the World's
treatment of England rugby union captain Lawrence Dallaglio. They put him a room with a bevy of beauties and encouraged him to tell tales of drug taking. Of course he didn't have to do it but what did the story achieve? We didn't discover that the England captain had taken drugs - in fact he was exonerated of all charges - just that he might lie about when seeking to impress young ladies while pursuing a sponsorship deal.
And that is the difficulty with the kind of journalism Wikileaks is currently producing. It's not 'copper-bottomed', 'stood up' or 'evened-out' in a way that journalism usually would be.
So can we have too much of a good thing? Certainly, taking my examples of Hollywood's superhero films, the answer is yes, but what about Wikileaks.
What good is being served by having this kind of information released?
Very little that I can see and I am not alone. Blogger and lawyer David Allen Green
has blogged along similar lines. He argues, and persuasively in my view, that transparency as a liberal ideal must be weighed against legitimacy, legality and privacy.
It is interesting to note that in the comments section of Green's blog, there are some fairly frothy postings, just as there have been on Twitter and again I am left ruing this desire of the modern world to see everything in black and white.
For example, it seems from the above that I am not supportive of the Cable leaks. But then I see an article like the one in the Washington Times, which called for the assassination of Julian Assange and I feel the need to point out that I am in no way in that camp. Neither am I with Sarah Palin, who called for Assange to be tried for treason against the US, neatly forgetting he is an Australian who until recently was based in Sweden. (seriously, if she is ever elected president the pictures
No. I'm a shade of grey. I applaud Assange for the work he did on the war logs as it poured bleach on the bacteria that Bush and Blair had cultivated around the War On Terror, but I'm not swayed by anything in this current glut of data until it has been through the journalistic process a few more times.
