Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomalpha | Hacker News Reader

So I will respectfully disagree with you there. In general I agree with you about most (almost all?) rights - they should be available to all citizens equally.

However if you agree that:

- The state should be allowed to keep secrets

- The state can't always be trusted to choose what should be secret or not

- There is a need to hold the state to account, but somehow not make all secrets public by doing so

Then there needs to be some subset of citizenry who can gain access to those secrets without the blessing of the state.

In history this has been likely to occur when a person with access to the secrets feels strongly enough about something that they feel the secret should be made public. For good reasons or bad reasons (which not everyone will agree with either way).

A good journalist can fulfil that role IMHO. I realise that "good" there is another assumption...

View on HN

Also the definition of journalist is very dodgy these days.

Craig Murray has been applying to the NUJ (National Union of Journalists) to become a "registered" journalist. They're sitting on his application, clearly because allowing him into the club will upset powerful people. [0]

The Assange trial has seen a definition of journalist that only includes employees of large media corporations. This is clearly wrong.

If we're going to extend special protection to journalists, we need a definition of "journalist" that doesn't mean "someone who will not need those protections because they're not going to do things that will upset the establishment".

[0] - https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/07/calling-all-...

Why does it need to be a subset? Then you run the risk that whoever uncovers wrongdoing is labeled "not a journalist". Same reason freedom of speech applies to everybody and not just registered "free speakers".

If everyone knows, or can easily know, then you can't keep secrets.

You might argue that we shouldn't have secrets at all and everything should be public.

I think that's a worthy goal, but doesn't work in practice.

If another state is competitive with you (and all states are competitive with each other to some extent), then I think you need the ability to keep some information confidential somehow.

That argument immediately slides down its own slippery slope to total control over information by government and corporations and their colleagues in the "news business".

Responsible disclosure of "secrets" in service of public interest is, to me, one of the defining characteristic of a free and thoughtful society.

[p.s.] It should be noted that your position is effectively arguing that 'Journalism is a component of state-craft and as such can only be practiced by official members of the governing class'.

I get the principle of the point you’re making but I don’t see how it can work if (and maybe this is the key bit) a state is allowed to have secrets.

Perhaps I’m blinkered, but I can’t see how a modern state can function without them in some form. To offer an extreme example, nuclear launch codes must remain secret. (Separate argument obvs about the merits for and against nuclear weapons).

If the state is going to have some secrets, I don’t see how they can work in practice if everyone is allowed to know them.

Separately I’m not sure I buy the slippery slope argument as an absolute given. It’s a clear risk yes, but I see good journalism as one of the safeguards against all forms of government malpractice, corruption or straight incompetence.

A society can set the standard of "responsible disclosure" that is done to serve the "right to know" to the public. A jury of peers can judge if the two conditions above are met.

[It should be also noted that the fact that state craft requires secrets is not a carte blanche to the state to commit illegal acts.]

Nuclear launch codes can remain secret. It is difficult to see how the disclosure could possibly be both "respnsible" and "in the public interest".

Disclosing that certain government agencies are running projects like "MK-Ultra" [1], "Mockingbird" [2], "Artichoke" [3] is in the public interest.

(You know, one of the characters in one of John le Carré's Smiley books once said: "A nation's secret services are the true reflection of its soul"...)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mockingbird

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_ARTICHOKE

100% agree with you hear and made much the same point in another post (just not as eloquently).

An analogue would be arguing that you have to be an official whistleblower in order to be protected by whistleblower laws, rather than simply being any citizen who meets the criteria necessary to be protected. It's just not a tenable way to serve the public good.

This is a point of view I hadn't considered, but is an interesting way of consoling my two points of view that secrecy is important but accountability is essential. This almost framed journalists as being a kind of law enforcement for the people, which is certainly an interesting way of viewing them.

I wholeheartedly agree - I absolutely view quality journalism as an essential part of an accountable and transparent state.

Good journalism, which IMHO should strive for a degree of impartiality[0], is needed to hold administrations at all levels to account.

[0] humans are clearly imperfect mind

It doesn't get less impartial than publishing original source classified documents with little to no commentary. That's what WikiLeaks is/does.

The Intercept and The Guardian add a layer of partiality/bias with narratives that paint state secrecy as inherently problematic. Somewhat paradoxically this anti-state bias in reporting makes them MORE palatable/acceptable; because their narrative justifies their role as the fourth estate of government.

WikiLeaks' position is that this narrative is implicit and doesn't need reiterated with each leak. Unfortunately powerful institutions and people experience the world in narratives and the importance of the fourth estate isn't one that is strongly engrained in their thinking. So, they go after WikiLeaks because of its impartiality.

WikiLeaks shouldn't have to add bias to every new publication to be legitimate. That's plainly backwards. They absolutely have the high ground here. All they need to do is paint the narrative to the courts that organizations like The Intercept paint continuously.

If the courts don't accept the narrative as sufficient justification then they drive the nails in the coffin of the free press at large.

Wikileaks 100% had a narrative, it was one of the things that disappointed me most about them.

In general, I was on the side of this information needing to come out, I just really wish Wikileaks hadn't politicized it the way they did.

WikiLeaks has a 100:1 ratio of words in leaked documents to narrative words, at LEAST. Meanwhile The Intercept has a 1:100 ratio. You can't dismiss this difference as insignificant.

That's a terrible metric to use.

Wikileaks would time their release of information for political effect.

It's a classic view, called "The Fourth Estate"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate

> So I will respectfully disagree with you there

But everything you wrote is full agreement.

Reality means your opinion can't happen without abuse.

If there's a subset of the people that are given special rights, the giver of those special rights can then cull anyone who would potentially act in opposition. Since it's the government itself that gives those rights, they're able to effectively act with impunity.

If you give everyone those rights, and those protections under the law, the government itself becomes a lot more honest and that's worth it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com