Is There a Right to Know?
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0 Left 0 Centered 0 RightWhy redact anything? That is the question that springs to mind in reading the self-justification offered by the New York Times for lending its megaphone to Wikileaks. The paper is now publishing breathless reports, accompanied by verbatim excerpts, drawn from about a quarter-million sensitive U.S. government documents. This dump is much like the tranche of intelligence files leaked in October to the Times and other reliable media — “reliable” in the sense that Wikileaks’ anti-American founder, Julian Assange, was confident these outlets would publish information whose revelation embarrasses the United States and endangers those who cooperate with our government.