Crying wolf?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Crying wolf?

“Freedom of the press” loses its moral force when it is played in aid of reckless conduct: the Washington Times telling Osama bin Laden that the US was able to monitor his mobile phone was indefensible. But there is danger, too, when the respect due to “national security” is diluted by accusations that prove unsubstantiated. From the Pentagon Papers on, there is a whole history of authority crying wolf. I don’t know if this is another. What I do know is that the current attacks on the Guardian echo those levelled at the Sunday Times in a number of investigations. We took national security as seriously as anyone, but over 14 years the barriers erected against legitimate inquiry on grounds of national security – reporting, not document dumps – proved spurious or self-serving. Kim Philby betrayed his country and sent countless people to their deaths. However, when we exposed the full measure of his treacheries the outrage in government and sections of the press was directed not at Philby and those who protected him for years but at our reporters. The diaries of the scholarly cabinet minister Richard Crossman have been recognised as shedding valuable light on the way we are governed, but government made a full-scale attempt to censor their publication. Same yet again in the long ordeal of Northern Ireland. Cheerleading was exalted and real reporting excoriated.

The cautionary maxim of Daily Beast writer Clive Irving’s “Stasi principle” remains valid: “A state’s appetite for collecting intelligence expands in direct relationship to its technical ability to do so.”