And we have The Guardian, revered organ of the British left, leading the charge against News of the World, reviled organ of the Murdochian right, for breach of journalistic ethics — the same Guardian that became the British home of WikiLeaks’ illegal dump of U.S. diplomatic communications. Clearly a large double-standard reigns at The Guardian. It is good and just for the media to engage in illegal activity to wage ideological war on causes and political powers those same media have determined in their wisdom to be wrong or immoral, but it is reprehensible and immoral to engage in illegal activity to probe the private affairs of celebrities, royalty or common people.Or put in simpler terms: is Corcoran honestly arguing that the media should be just as vigilant and ready to toss aside the formalities of the law in "(probing) the private affairs...of common people" as it is in holding policymakers (who may themselves have ordered information suppressed on questionable grounds) to account for their decisions?
Because if so, I can't believe he hasn't yet found his way to Sun Media.
the same Guardian that became the British home of WikiLeaks’ illegal dump of U.S. diplomatic communications.
ReplyDeleteExcuse me? Bradley Manning is the individual alleged to have broken the law by leaking those cables. But once Wikileaks had them, why was it illegal to release them to the Guardian or anyone else or illegal for the Guardian to publish them? The staff at Wikileaks aren't bound in any way by the fact that access to those cables was originally restricted to those with the proper clearance. This is as silly as Americans claiming that Assange, an Australian, is guilty of treason against a country in which he wasn't born and of which he isn't a citizen.
It kinda lets the air out of Corcoran's moral outrage when he simply gets his facts wrong.