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The leaks and the disclosures

Dec 16, 2010 Editorial

The persistent criticism of agencies and entities that expose situations that people and departments want to hide is reaching alarming proportions. All of a sudden one is finding that some people in Government-sponsored agencies consider it a crime to expose anything irregular. Some agencies have even contemplated moving to the courts in the wake of serious disclosures.
Some newspapers, more than others, always attract the bulk of the condemnation for disclosures. One of them is Kaieteur News which is now the target of every agency. The Commissioner General of the Guyana Revenue Authority now blames the newspaper for every conceivable ill in his agency. He said in a recent interview that the exposes by the newspaper hurt his entity by virtue of the negative publicity that resulted from the disclosures.
There was the case of the boat that someone stole from the custody of the GRA. Mr Sattaur stopped short of accusing the newspaper of stealing the boat. He contended that the disclosure aided the people who stole the boat. How could this be? He argued that the disclosure was premature.
Indeed, the boat had been stolen from under the nose of the GRA. Delaying the news would not have changed the situation.
A city importer brought in two high performance cars, which he attempted to pass off as small cars. The GRA spotted the fraud and of course the matter reached the newspaper. Mr Sattaur was again angry. He suggested that the newspaper publicises the disclosures because it has a political agenda.
In Mr Sattaur’s book, any criticism of a government entity is political and is anti-government.
More recently there was fraud at the GRA and again the newspaper got wind of it and duly publicized it. There was the usual brouhaha. Then came the admonition to await the disclosures by the very Guyana Revenue Authority before anything is published.
Newspapers are the eyes and ears of the public. They are the watchdogs and the protectors of the society. Because of this role, two enterprising reporters exposed Watergate that toppled Richard Nixon from the presidency. The presidency could not ask the Washington Post to hold the story until the Office of the President saw it fit to announce that it had bugged the offices of the opposition.
Such was the publication of the act that President Richard Nixon wanted to hide so bad that the authors gained international prizes, and awards. One of them was the Pulitzer Prize. There is now the view that these men set the new bar for investigative reporting.
Now there are the WikiLeaks, disclosures of communication by the American diplomatic community. Needless to say, these are hurting the Americans and many others about whom there are the disclosures. Of interest is that none of the major parties involved—the Americans, the British, the Canadians, the Russians, the Indians, the Chinese and just about everyone else—have not attempted to gag their media. They cannot.
In our corner of the world, one would not have been surprised if there was an announcement of imprisonment over such disclosures. Some people may have rushed to the courts and we will not be surprised if in the not too distant future there will not be calls for a ban on the media to prevent the disclosures released by WikiLeaks.
The Americans surely cannot pressure the media to cease publication of the disclosures. And the Guyana Government has committed itself to a free press so it will do nothing to suppress the publication of material contained in the documents released by WikiLeaks. But it goes without saying that the government itself would not be too happy with leaks.
Over the years there have been the rush to publish secret documents and that is not likely to change any time soon. Forbes Burnham’s most closely guarded secret often made the pages as did documents from the desks of many Government officials. Those things make a newspaper.

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