EDITORIAL - WikiLeaks, transparency and the right to know

This newspaper gave serious thought to the matter before concluding that it was in the public interest, and to the national good, to publish information from communications between the United States Embassy in Kingston and the State Department, made available to us by the free-speech organisation WikiLeaks.

We were aware of the argument that would be advanced - primarily by public officials moulded in a tradition of secrecy - that a formulation of policy and the conduct of relationships between states are best pursued without the transparency that is demanded by today's society and tends to be part of modern governance.

However, as was noted in Sunday's introduction to this series, "a healthy, vibrant and inquisitive media play a vital role in making a country a better place to live and work".

It is that imperative that we now employ by affording our readers a unique and rare insight into the views held of our country and its leaders by a powerful and important neighbour, and how these perceptions are shaped.

lessons to be learnt

In many respects, the administration of Prime Minister Bruce Golding, as well as the Opposition People's National Party, should find this frank, uncensored assessment of their behaviour and attitudes worthwhile. If seriously studied, they may even be useful in the country's development of statecraft and policy formulation.

Of course, there will be those who will be wary of the possible compromising of national security when media publish secret and, supposedly, sensitive information. That issue does not arise here.

In any event, newspapers are accustomed to the custodians of secrets wanting to keep them in their custody in perpetuity and to paint doomsday scenarios when this is challenged. The New York Times and the Pentagon Papers in 1971 is a case in point.

Publication of information from the study ordered by Defence Secretary Robert McNamara on America's involvement in Vietnam between 1945 and 1946 shows how the US government had systematically lied to its people. Critics argued that that would have weakened the United States and its institutions. Instead, the US emerged stronger.

Indeed, it is arguable that the fact that those whose decision to publish the Pentagon Papers prevailed placed America in better stead for when, a few years later, it had to confront the Watergate break-in and the cover-ups by Richard Nixon, leading to the crumbling of his presidency.

We do not, of course, mean to equate these WikiLeaks cables with either the Pentagon Papers or the Watergate secrets revealed by the Washington Post's Deep Throat source. However, they help to shine light on important aspects of public policy, some of which have been controversial, and our reporting on which helps to advance Jamaican democracy and the quality of governance.

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