News is what someone wants to suppress

Wikileak’s online release of Afghanistan war logs throws up interesting information on the war in Afghanistan.

In The Irish Times of Saturday, July 31 in the Weekend section, Davin O’Dwyer writes an interesting piece on the issue and goes on to talk about secrets and lies in the internet age.
He says, “In a democracy, a major obstacle to continuous warmongering is pubic opinion, which can be more easily manipulated if the public is deprived of all the facts”. Elsewhere in the article he tells his readers that President Obama has indicted more people now for leaks than all previous US presidents put together.

Anyone who has seen the film ‘A Very British Coup’ will have a little understanding of the power of secret service agencies. One is often tempted to ask what real power do the elected politicians in fact really have.

O’Dwyer quotes Lord Northcliffe: “News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising”.

In Ireland Nama is not subject to freedom of information requests. And not a word of protest.

He also argues that the scope for government secrecy to conceal wrongdoing is far greater than for an individual – there are many more victims of government sanctioned war than there are victims of serial killers.

And how has the church managed to hide its secrets? All the current scandals that are enveloping the church maybe has far more to do with how secrecy is handled than anything to do with the crimes and wrongdoing.

O’Dwyer finishes his article by pointing out how Lord Northcliffe well knew there will always be somebody somewhere wanting to suppress information. And Davin O’Dwyer wisely says that it is how the information will be revealed and how the somebodies will try to suppress is, is what is changing so dramatically.

Is it all as cynical as that? Probably