WHISTLE-BLOWING can be risky business. People sufficiently courageous to leak confidential information seldom benefit from the outcome. Nearly all are hounded down, ostracized and live uncomfortably thereafter.
I suspect that the same will befall a 39-year-old computer programmer from Australia named Julian Assange. He is not a journalist; he is a hacker. He simply launched a website, WikiLeaks, in 2006, dedicated to leaking sensitive information.
A bona fide journalist would’ve made better use of the treasure trove passed on to him by Bradley Manning, a disgruntled functionary in the American military, and the real whistle-blower here. If Assange couldn’t do it himself, he should have engaged an editor to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Not all news is fit to print.
Who cares, for example, about Libya’s Colonel al-Qaddafi’s reliance on a 38-year-old “voluptuous blonde” nurse from the Ukraine, with whom he may or may not be romantically involved? Or that Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbaev paid Elton John $1.5 million to sing at his son-in-law’s birthday party?
Of greater concern to the whole world is the knowledge that Iran’s loose cannon Mahmoud Ahmadinejad not only scares the living daylights out of Israel and the United States, but that his Arab “friends” all around him are equally on edge and have secretly given both Israel and the United States the go-ahead to take him out.
A sensible editor, presented with the task of “tasting” all that “copy” (over 251 000 diplomatic cables) would have ensured that innocent persons would not be hurt by the exposé. If unsure, he would’ve invoked a dictum of the profession: “When in doubt, leave out.”
But no, Assange barges in and threatens to bare all. There are several instances in which whistle-blowing has taken place; like the analyst in the United States Defence Department who went public with the story on the giant C-5A transport plane and the inspector whose revelations led to the recall of more than seven million Chevrolets.
I have some sympathy for Julian Assange. I belong to the sceptical school of journalists – people like I.F. Stone, that irascible thorn in the side of the American government from 1953 to 1971. “Izzy” Stone believed that all governments lie.
Manipulated
A blogger writes: “No doubt there are some secrets that are best kept from general knowledge in the overall scheme of things, but the general practice has been so manipulated by persons in privileged positions, that many now feel that it may be best to bare it all and let the chips fall where they may.”
Have you noticed what has just been revealed in Haiti about that cholera outbreak? Remember how officialdom responded when the Haitians accused the United Nations Nepalese peacekeepers of defecating in a river? They were shouted down. This past week the Associated Press published a report leaked by an international official who released it on condition of anonymity.
Whistle-blowers must be prepared to pay the price for their courage as we witness the death of privacy. Indeed, in this 21st century, secrecy may well become antithetical to democracy, and officialdom will continue to stamp “Top Secret” on information it wants to conceal.
Historians salivating at this development allowing them to leapfrog past the 25-year wait for the disclosure of classified information, must know that this is merely one source – the United States State Department.
This bonanza might be short-lived. If I know anything about the bureaucracy, it’s going to board up the hatches tighter. Fewer Bradley Mannings will take to work Lady Gaga CDs and download what Hillary Clinton whispers to Wen Jiabao.
That’s why I am wary of that Internet-incubated invention called the “citizen journalist”.
Anyone with a computer can broadcast. It’s a nonsense. Why can’t anyone with a bread knife perform ENT surgery?
By the way, whatever happened to our freedom of information and transparency legislation promised three years ago?
Let’s hope it didn’t die with Prime Minister David Thompson.
• Carl Moore was the first Editor of THE NATION and is a social commentator.
