Wikileaks – The State Department PR Machine Neatly Handles Wikileaks And It’s The Media Having To Do The Explaining

Philip M. Stone December 2, 2010 Follow on Twitter

Want a lesson in damage control? Then just study how the US State Department has handled Wikileaks. It’s A PR exercise that should be studied in universities for years. Now, it is the media that needs all the PR help it can get to handle an unforgiving public.

Can’t remember the last time there was a televised interview with the US Ambassador in London but there he was talking at the embassy to the BBC, very relaxed, smiling broadly, and remarking how he had been told by another very senior ambassador, “There but for the Grace of God Go I”. Diplomatic correspondent  Bridget Kendall has been around long enough to recognize a folksy smokescreen when she sees one and she tried continually to get the ambassador to say how embarrassing it all really was but he kept on acting as if he didn’t have a care in the world which is no doubt exactly what Washington wants the world to think.

“Acting” is probably exactly the right word above, and he pulled it off as have US ambassadors around the world, no doubt taking their lead from State Department instructions that haven’t been leaked.

An ftm reader wrote to us Wednesday, “Looks as though (in the UK at least) all the Wikileaks fun is over! On the 5am news this morning the story was that the US was not too worried about the leaks. In fact it was helpful for people to see how  influential America was in the world.

"Were the stories undermining  their relationships?" No! Quoting what one diplomatic from another  country said,  "Don't worry. You should hear what our diplomats say  about you!)

“In today’s papers there is really nothing new coming out and what is there is 
short of any real ‘bite’. It also  looks as though the Wikileaks founder is being isolated  legally. One can't help admire such a ‘smooth’ and effective PR operation that  took only 48 hours + to kick in.”

But those newspapers in the forefront of publishing the leaks are also in the forefront of a reader backlash. It seems a lot of people out there are thinking that these were really confidential exchanges and who is the press to decide what should and should not be in the public domain.

You got the feeling the media knew it was walking on thin ice. When the likes of The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and The New York Times go out of their way in editorial notes, as they did when they started publishing the leaks, that they tried their best to see no real harm would come to those mentioned it gave one the feeling they thought they were vulnerable.

The New York Times has been running a truly interesting exchange with its readers who have questioned whether the whole affair is in the public’s interest. Many have questioned, for instance,  whether the material should have been made public, as did a Brian Chrisman, “It is not up to WikiLeaks, The New York Times, or any other entity to determine whether confidential United States government information should be shielded from the public. We elect leaders who, along with their trusted appointees and officials, analyze data and make such decisions. By subverting that process, The New York Times and Wikileaks are undermining our entire electoral process. Resorting to “somebody will do it anyway” rationalizations is pathetic.Legal? Perhaps. Wrong? Definitely.

To which Executive editor Bill Keller gave a really long reply, edited here, but an indication how the newspaper believes it has to fully explain itself. “So, two basic questions. Why do we get to decide? And why did we decide to publish these articles and selected cables? 

“We get to decide because America is cursed with a free press. I’m the first to admit that news organizations, including this one, sometimes get things wrong. We can be overly credulous (as in some of the reporting about Iraq’s purported Weapons of Mass Destruction) or overly cynical about official claims and motives. We may err on the side of keeping secrets (President Kennedy wished, after the fact, that The Times had published what it knew about the planned Bay of Pigs invasion) or on the side of exposing them. We make the best judgments we can. When we get things wrong, we try to correct the record. A free press in a democracy can be messy. 

“But the alternative is to give the government a veto over what its citizens are allowed to know. Anyone who has worked in countries where the news diet is controlled by the government can sympathize with Thomas Jefferson’s oft-quoted remark that he would rather have newspapers without government than government without newspapers. And Jefferson had plenty of quarrels with the press of his day. 

“As for why we directed our journalistic attention to these cables, we hope that will be clear from the articles we have written. They contribute to our understanding of how American foreign policy is made, how well it is working, what kind of relationships we have with allies and adversaries. The first day’s articles offered the richest account we have yet seen of America’s attempts to muster a regional and global alliance against Iran; and disclosed that the State Department has increasingly put its diplomats in the uncomfortable position of gathering intelligence on diplomatic counterparts. “

So then Glenn Willis of Boston College got to the crux of the matter. “You note that “Government officials sometimes argue — and the administration has argued in the case of these secret cables — that disclosures of confidential conversations between American diplomats and their foreign counterparts could endanger the national interest by making foreign governments more wary of cooperating with the United States in the fight against terrorists or other vital activities.”  But you offer no serious response to this very serious argument.  Do you believe that the government argument is invalid for some reason, or do you choose to ignore it in order to accomplish other goods?  This, I think, was the most glaring omission in your note to readers regarding the latest Wikileaks trove.”

And again Keller resorted to the long answer. “First of all, a lot of what appears in a free press — not just secret cables — can be injurious to America’s diplomacy. To pick a recent example, news organizations have regularly quoted senior American officials (sometimes by name, but often without authorization) accusing President Karzai’s government in Afghanistan of corruption and incompetence. The fact that American officials share these views with the press is undoubtedly irritating to President Karzai, and may make him harder to deal with. And yet our relationship with President Karzai and his government is at the heart of American strategy in Afghanistan. The public that sends the money and manpower to pursue that strategy is entitled to know the nature of our allies, even if that complicates the work of diplomats.

“Second, while it is enlightening to see these observations in official cables, for the most part they enlarge rather than upend our understanding of complex foreign relations. For example, The Times has reported on numerous occasions that Iran’s Arab neighbors share America’s (and Israel’s) worry about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. The cables dramatize the depth of their concern, but the fact of their concern is not revelatory.

“Third, foreign leaders generally cooperate with the United States — or withhold their cooperation — based on self-interest. Some of the leaders quoted in the articles that we have written based on these secret cables will surely be (or at least will act) horrified that the United States did not do a better job of protecting their private conversations from public scrutiny. But they see advantages in cooperating with the United States that transcend embarrassment. They need our aid, they want our business, they want our solidarity against common enemies. So while we don’t want to dismiss the possible harm to American diplomacy, we should not exaggerate it, either.

“Finally, the government is not an infallible judge of what is in the national interest. This country has a long history of information being stamped “secret” in order to hide malfeasance, or cover up embarrassing misjudgments, or paper over policy disputes. We listen to the government’s case for secrecy with great respect, but we do not always agree.

And there was also the important question about the ethics of using “stolen material”. Managing editor Jill Abrahamson tackled that one. “The WikiLeaks case is not the first time that important news reports have been based on stolen documents. In the famous case of the Pentagon Papers, The Times published articles based on a voluminous secret history of the Vietnam War, which had been stolen and copied by a former government employee, Daniel Ellsberg, who then shared the material with The Times. Then, as now, there was a public argument about whether it was right for The Times to publish articles based on those stolen documents, which were more sensitive — classified “top secret” — than the WikiLeaks cables.

“President Nixon claimed that the articles compromised national security and strained relations with our allies. But one year later, one of the administration’s top lawyers, who had made such arguments, admitted that no programs or diplomatic relationships had really been hurt by publication of the Pentagon Papers. Then, as now, The Times made the difficult editorial judgment that the newsworthiness of the documents demanded publication.

“These are not easy decisions, but they are made in the interest of keeping the citizenry well informed about its government. That is what the founders of this country intended. It is often easy to overlook how fearful of centralized government power they were, and how much they trusted a free press to be a bulwark against it.”

The jury is still out whether the media should have handled the leaks as they did but what is really great for democracy is the discussion evolving between the media and its audience who are, like the media, not afraid to take up a cause they believe is wrong.