Maggie's Farm

Kinsley's response is odd. There are points I agree with, that everybody has a right to information and the right to disclose it.

But Kinsley says, at the end, there is no invisible hand choosing what information should be seen and what shouldn't.

That's not a problem at all. The invisible hand isn't something that chooses anything or separates good from bad. If the invisible hand is letting all that information out, or allowing people to seek the secrets they are hunting down, then the invisible hand is doing its job.

Ideas, in a free marketplace, are information. So are secrets. Knowing those secrets can be important to the population - especially if the population is the victim.

I agree with Kinsley's basic point, that freedom of the press does not include special rules for journalists as separate entities from, say, The News Junkie. On the other hand, I disagree with his final point that this is not Easter and these are not eggs. If a public institution, which is elected and approved of by 'the people' is keeping secrets, then that institution, by definition, should have no secrets from those it has been allowed to exist in the service of.

This, of course, is a slippery slope. It would seem that the military, by default, can have no secrets and everything it is working on, or planning in a war, or discussing in general, is open for discussion if it is discovered. I'm not saying that. Exposing spies identities is clearly detrimental to the lives of the spies, and exposing military plans puts individual lives at risk.

But the exposure of NSA spying on US citizens put nobody at risk. In general, most of the secrets the government keeps from citizens is designed specifically to give it additional powers over those it governs, so it can govern with greater impunity rather than at the behest of those who elect and approve of its existence.

In essence, Kinsley's article argues against itself by stipulating there are no special rules for journalists as opposed to other information vectors (like bloggers), while saying the government should have rights to regulate classified information.