WikiLeaks Is Boring Us, Possibly to Death

The pundits say that the WikiLeaks document dump is little more than international gossip, but it's the kind that could damage the ability of governments to keep us safe.

The National Post's Lorne Gunter says there’s nothing too exciting in the WikiLeaks’ latest document dump, correctly pointing out that ‘revelations’ that the Afghan government is corrupt or that Syria sent weapons to Hezbollah is the kind of stuff that “can be gleaned from any day’s newspapers or evening news broadcasts.” He suggests that WikiLeaks is just out to grab attention, and we shouldn’t give them the satisfaction. “The best way for the Americans and others to handle these eruptions would be to yawn and say ‘been there, done that,’ rather than running around frantic,” he writes.

While Gunter thinks the leaks are merely criminally boring, the Globe and Mail’s Andrew Steele says they’re criminally dangerous. In a column that does an excellent job of skewering the notion that the leaks are in the public interest, Steele says that unlike the uncovering of Watergate or the Pentagon Papers, the WikiLeaks dump reveals no incident where government secrecy is endangering lives and was prompted by WikiLeaks’ misguided “ideological belief that all government secrets are always bad.” But Steele says it’s in our interest that diplomats’ communications be protected because “experts must be free to speak truth to power and give their true advice on the world.” If they know their secret cables are going to hit the front pages, they might start censoring themselves and erode governments' ability to make good decisions, Steele rightly predicts. The idea that governments would begin behaving internally the same way they behave outwardly, when they often pretend to be unaware of obvious realities and act as if they are speaking to a nation of toddlers, is certainly a disturbing prospect.

Luiza Ch. Savage at Maclean’s (a publication that is no stranger to dubious sensationalism) seems to be taking the leaks at face value, saying of the New York Times coverage of the dump that “[e]ach story includes nuggets that on a regular day would probably be enough to lead the front page of the newspaper.” She might be right, but that could say more about the quality of the media’s coverage than the value of the leaks.