Re:WikiLeaks Wants To Spill Your Corporate Secrets
by InclinedPlane on Tuesday November 30, 2010 @03:54AM
(#1953574)
My point is that in the time between now and when all governments and powerful organizations on Earth are open and honest (likely to be a fair stretch of time) organizations like wikileaks cannot help but discriminate in the organizations they shine a light onto. There are innumerable reasons why this is so, starting with the mere matter of random chance and limited capabilities, moving to the matter of the nature of the organization and the opportunity for such leaks to occur, to the interest of the "viewership", the consequences of getting caught, etc, etc, etc.
This discriminatory coverage has the potential to create a false portrait of reality. And that has consequences. Imagine two magazine covers, one photoshopped and immaculate the other completely "honest". To most uncritical observers the "honest" cover will appear vulgar and ugly in comparison. Only a few people will take the time to appreciate that the perfect cover is an utter lie. How do such dynamics play out in society, business, and geopolitical relations? In a wikileaks future a brutal dictatorship that can maintain utter control over its media image might be able to appear better than an honest and open, though flawed, country of liberty and consensual governance. Indeed, this is already a problem to some degree today. Idiots who don't know better imagine that life in dictatorial regimes might be exactly how the regime and its sycophants portray it (all the more believable without any dissenting voices), whereas every gritty aspect of life in western democracies and every flaw down to the least consequential is revealed in gory high-definition detail.
To me wikileaks specifically seems very much biased by the "point spread" problem, of judging America and the west by a much higher standard than the rest of the world. There's nothing wrong with holding America to a higher standard, but there's everything wrong with losing sight of the fact that the standards are different and then falling into the notion, as so many have, that, say, America is as bad as the Iranian regime, or that American troops are no better than the Taliban. The consequences of such discriminatory judgments and of such imbalanced worldviews are dire indeed.
This discriminatory coverage has the potential to create a false portrait of reality. And that has consequences. Imagine two magazine covers, one photoshopped and immaculate the other completely "honest". To most uncritical observers the "honest" cover will appear vulgar and ugly in comparison. Only a few people will take the time to appreciate that the perfect cover is an utter lie. How do such dynamics play out in society, business, and geopolitical relations? In a wikileaks future a brutal dictatorship that can maintain utter control over its media image might be able to appear better than an honest and open, though flawed, country of liberty and consensual governance. Indeed, this is already a problem to some degree today. Idiots who don't know better imagine that life in dictatorial regimes might be exactly how the regime and its sycophants portray it (all the more believable without any dissenting voices), whereas every gritty aspect of life in western democracies and every flaw down to the least consequential is revealed in gory high-definition detail.
To me wikileaks specifically seems very much biased by the "point spread" problem, of judging America and the west by a much higher standard than the rest of the world. There's nothing wrong with holding America to a higher standard, but there's everything wrong with losing sight of the fact that the standards are different and then falling into the notion, as so many have, that, say, America is as bad as the Iranian regime, or that American troops are no better than the Taliban. The consequences of such discriminatory judgments and of such imbalanced worldviews are dire indeed.