| > This is why the reasoning that Wikileaks helps dictatorships is absurd. I never wrote that nor implied it. I wrote and I maintain that wikileaks deals more blows to democracies than dictatorships and that it's because of the very nature of democracies (edit: notwithstanding the whole anti-US bias of Assange). I don't know how to make my point clearer: - Wikileaks's leaks are mainly about democracies, not dictatorships. - It creates tensions in these democracies and it does not in dictatorships. - This consumes resources and has consequences in democracies (civil unrest, lack of trust from the population, investigations, weakening of governments, tensions in relationships with other nations, etc.) - Whether it's a good thing or not, it's desirable or not doesn't change the fact that dictatorships are not diminished and are not the target of wikileaks while democracies are. > We are talking war crimes, environmental disasters, political corruption, ... And regarding my last point: I do not believe for a second that we should ignore those facts in order to appear strong or clean or whatever. |
I think the central fallacy here is seeing the central operating principle of democracy, which is the informed public feeding their knowledge and judgement back in, as a blow to democracy. It is like a automotive mechanic saying "there's your problem, the fuel air mixture in your engine is exploding." The press reporting on the government is one link in democracy's central cycle.
Your are right about seeing reporting as a blow to dictatorship, of course. In their case the action of an informed public really is a blow to the state, following the fact that the public is not part of the state.
So in that light it's true that journalism does more to help free societies than it does to hurt dictatorships, since there's more of it in freer societies.