I don't think there is any danger that exposes like Wikileaks will become the rule.
I do think we need media to be much more aggressive about getting and reporting facts. Wikileaks demonstrated that the "news" we get is so much pablum. The idea of embedding reporters is to me incompatible with a truly free press. Reporters should have much broader access to facts, should dare to print stories that are not sycophantic, to tell the truth regardless of how it hurts the powerful -- or the weak -- for that matter.
You can fool a people with propaganda. Hitler did it. Stalin did. And they were not the only ones. But for a democracy to succeed whether in war and peace, its people have to be informed. It's people have to have access to different sources of information that represent different points of view and to critical analysis of the quality of the nation's leadership.
I just don't think we will survive as a nation unless we limit our government's ability to suppress historical information. I am not talking about military plans or truly sensitive matters. But information about war crimes or errors by troops in combat should not be withheld from voters. That makes it impossible for voters to make fully informed decisions when voting.
So I think Wikileaks was an anomaly. I think our government will protect itself from such breaches in the future -- at least insofar as the scope of the leaks -- but, I think that Wikileaks served a rather positive purpose in that it awakened Americans to the fact that the government is not just hiding strategically important military secrets but also a lot of simply embarrassing facts about misconduct and mistakes -- as well as the extent to which diplomats indulge in personal gossip.
The Wikileaks about how the State Department was trying to get confidential information from UN staff and delegates was very troubling. Frankly, I'm surprised that the UN is still in the US after that revelation. It really makes the US look like a bunch of amateur schoolkids. Ridiculous. We used to accuse the Soviets of that kind of trick.
It's stupid because it is likely to result in a lot of misinformation sent our way.
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