Perspective: 1987 Panel On The Press, National Security, And Official State Secrets

from the the-more-things-change dept

As we observe what we can in the Bradley Manning trial, it is difficult not to also consider where the mainstream press and Wikileaks fall on the spectrum of their duties to the public and, if any, to the governments whose secrets they expose. In the opinion of some, the media in the United States has done a wonderful job of abdicating their responsibilities, both in covering what Manning exposed and in honestly covering his trial and motivations. Wikileaks, for their part, is both a new type of media animal and a foreign website, raising all kinds of questions about whether they should be considered "media", whether they have any responsibility to the US government, and what their motivations for releasing the secrets Manning provided them were.

It is somewhat instructive to learn that these are questions that are not being raised for the first time, however. In this video of a panel hosted by the Writers Watch Legislative Conference in 1987, several members of the media attempt to tackle the question of how media members should treat secret information when it is provided to them by their sources. It is an hour long but, if you're interested in the topic of what the media's role should be in serving the public, it's worth every second. Watch the whole thing and come to your own conclusions, but, strictly in my opinion, Christopher Hitchens steals the show at the end, after the other panelists take the position that media should, to some degree, defer to government on the issue of their secrets, launching into an explanation of how state secrets are handled in Britain, the culture of censorship that grew up around their lack of rights, and whether or not Americans should want the same for their own society. A couple of highlight quotes include.

"You should never allow yourself to forget when considering official secrecy and its analogues that you are the intended target of official secrecy and those that doubt it and those that swallow the patriotic defenses for this sad construct are preparing in their minds and trying to prepare in your minds to become model citizens in a national security state. And that's a destiny that I think you should reject while you're lucky enough to be able to do so."

And:

"I regard in fact official secrecy as a negation of the proper conduct and supervision of national security."

That these words came almost two decades ago while we now find ourselves in what can only be described as the furtherance of the then secretive American government is a sad, sad thing.

Filed Under: bradley manning, christopher hitchens, national security