Harry Reid writing in the Herald talks about leaks and spin. Specifically Peter Clarke’s comments regarding counter intelligence leaks. The complaint being that it is a betrayal and “beneath contempt”. Well, yes… I tend to agree with Clarke that leaking intelligence in this manner is not on as it places agents’ lives at risk.
The article then compares this with the recent arrest of Lord Levy and the mistrust that now surrounds government. In it, he states that:
This, in turn, leads to widespread suspicion about the rapid growth of surveillance by the state. It is now almost impossible, for example, to have a mature and reasonable argument about identity cards because we no longer trust those in authority.
Fair enough, but… Whose fault is it when any attempt at a mature debate results in government ministers vilifying anyone who dares to cross them? Or, for that matter try to use the law to keep details of their schemes from those they are charged with serving? Reid tries to suggest that ministers are not the ones at fault here:
It would be wrong to blame current government ministers for this climate, in which suspicion, paranoia and conspiracy theories flourish, but they have not helped matters.
Woah! Hold your horses cobber… Ministers are entirely to blame for this culture of suspicion and mistrust. Behaviour begats behaviour. This administration has behaved abominably; its effects on our liberty have been corrosive. If we as a consequence are cynical and mistrustful, you must look to those whose behaviour caused it, not us. The cynicism and suspicion is a consequence, not an antecedent. We (the collective “we”) elected them. That is our part. But that and that alone. From then on in, it has been their behaviour and theirs alone that is responsible for the current climate; the lies, the misinformation, the spin, the briefings and the leaks. Don’t you dare put the blame anywhere other than on the shoulders of those responsible; government ministers and no one else but government ministers.
Reid then goes on to compare his own early behaviour as a journalist engaging in the practice of leaking during the Callahan years:
I suppose this was a classic exercise in spinning, in the manipulation of information.
That’s exactly what it was.
I took part in it and was happy to do so.
So Reid cannot really complain about what is going on now and I notice from the qualifying comment that follows that in essence, he doesn’t. To do otherwise would be supreme hypocrisy. Now, however, we get to the nub of this little moan. It isn’t the government, it isn’t the sneaky little spinning journos that are responsible for the corrosive atmosphere in our current politics; oh, no, there is another, more sinister force at work:
But we now live in a world in which misinformation, malice, conspiracy theories and powerful paranoia are being purveyed night and day in the so-called “blogosphere”.
Sigh… It doesn’t take log for some “professional” hack to try to blame us for something. The culture of suspicion and cynicism isn’t the fault of ministers who are, after all, just fine fellows doing a dirty job; nor is it the the fault of the journos who are, after all, merely reporting the “truth”; no, it’s you and I, the nasty bloggers who are to blame. We have dared to voice our opinion and that just isn’t right, is it?
Professional journalists may not have been subject to many restraints apart from legal ones, yet the media has always been regulated, as any editor knows. Citizen journalists are not regulated at all, not subject to any restraints.
Ah, yes, “regulation”. While there are a good many blogs out there that are, shall we say, just a little less than reliable, a good many provide considered opinion that far surpasses that of the so called professionals. Those same professionals who are lining up to attack those whom they see as invading their turf. That’s what this snide little piece is all about. An unholy alliance with the state would serve their purpose nicely as it would silence their critics and what they see as their unregulated competitors.
We could soon see the most unlikely alliance of all: an alliance between the old media and governments against the new army of bloggers.
I wouldn’t be one little bit surprised.