WikiLeaks files revealed that the Australian government quietly tried to undermine a proposed ban on cluster bombs [EPA]WikiLeaks' obvious truth People must seek to protect not only WikiLeaks, but also the mechanism by which the information enters into our purview.WikiLeaks files revealed that the Australian government quietly tried to undermine a proposed ban on cluster bombs [EPA]WikiLeaks' obvious truth People must seek to protect not only WikiLeaks, but also the mechanism by which the information enters into our purview.

here is the violence you see, and
then there is the violence you don't.
Philosopher Slavoj Zizek captures
this point expertly in his monograph
Violence: Six Sideways Reflections,
when he opens with the well-known
story about an employee suspected
of stealing from his workplace:
"Every evening, as he leaves the
factory, the wheelbarrow he pushes
in front of him is carefully inspected.
The guards find nothing; it is always
empty. Finally, the penny drops:
what the worker is stealing are the
wheelbarrows themselves. The
guards were simply blinded to the
obvious truth."
In cataloguing world politics, news
media has a tendency to focus our
attention on the highly visible acts of
violent conflict and environmental
degradation, or what Zizek calls
"subjective" violence. This myopic
view, he reasons, disables us from
seeing two other, more pervasive
and "objective" forms of violence:
the "symbolic" violence of language
(e.g. our choice and assembly of
words) and the "systemic" violence
of our economic and political
systems (e.g. the transboundary
harm to small island communities
caused by economic activity in far-
off places).
Simply put, physical injury is only
one form of violence; other forms
exist invisibly in the functioning of
language and power that to a large
extent determine how societies
interrelate. Nowhere is this power
more far-reaching, relatively
unchallenged, and relied upon than
in world news media.
Fairfax's wheelbarrow
For the second time this year,
incidents involving the Australian
press have directed our attention
towards the harm caused by the
routine operation of the media. First,
in what has now been widely
reported, various employees of
News Corporation have been
accused of improperly accessing the
telecommunications services of
targeted individuals in order to
publish more detailed and
revelatory stories about a kidnapped
girl - a simple yet utterly deplorable
case of trying to manufacture an
exclusive scoop.
The second and more recent
revelation has consequences that are
equally significant, but is not so well
known.
Beginning in December 2010, a little-
known Australian journalist Dr Philip
Dorling began authoring what he
hassubsequently referred to as "a
large number of front-page stories
that have shed new light" on
Australia's foreign relations. Each of
the stories, with topics ranging from
the content of US embassy cables to
previously confidential Australian
policy positions, has been based on
"exclusive" access to WikiLeaks
source documents, and published by
Fairfax, one of Australia's largest
newspaper companies.
Despite requests, and is standard
practice elsewhere, neither Fairfax
nor Dr Dorling made the WikiLeaks
material publicly available.
Of particular importance were
reports that since at least 2006,
Australia had - under the previous
Labour government - worked behind
the scenes with the governments of
Britain, Canada and Japan, as well as
with certain Asian and African states,
to ensure that the final text of the
international convention banning
cluster munitions would not
preclude Australian forces jointly
operating alongside states who are
not party to the treaty, and who are
therefore permitted to deploy cluster
bombs. In essence, Australia took a
pro-active public role in promoting
the humanitarian need for a treaty
banning cluster munitions in all their
respects, and quietly went about
undermining what was actually
precluded by the convention.
However, Dr Dorling and Fairfax did
not break their "exclusive" cluster
munitions story until May 2011.
By this time, the final consultation
period before Australia ratified its
highly-criticised interpretation of its
treaty obligations into domestic law
had ended. And with it, a further
seven months of lobbying by various
interest groups advocating for and
against Australia's draft legislation
had passed. Indeed, all indications
since around February were that the
Senate would vote on the bill within
weeks, until that decision was
pushed back to March, April, then
further still to May, June and July.
Indeed, it is only by pure chance that
the Senate has still yet to vote on
whether to pass the bill without
amendment, effectively ending
years of lobbying both here and
overseas.
The months since November 2010,
when Dr Dorling first took possession
of the WikiLeaks material, have
therefore been a unique and critical
time for all interest groups to be
across the finer details of the source
documents. It was, after all,
information intended by WikiLeaks
to be freely accessible in the public
domain - not for the exclusive use of
Dr Dorling and Fairfax.
The obvious truth
It was not until 29 August and
subsequently, however, that ABC's
Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes
was able to publicise details of how
Dr Philip Dorling, acting as a
freelancer, came to acquire exclusive
"sole custody" of the WikiLeaks
cables in November 2010. As a result
of Holmes' investigation, it also
became clear that seniorFairfax
editors had, under pressure since
December 2010 (for example, here
and here), argued that to retain
exclusive access to the WikiLeaks
material enabled Fairfax time to
continue "mining the source
documents", because "to put the
material online would be to give
access to our competitors in the local
market". Holmes rightly summed up
these tensions within Fairfax thus:
"It's in the public interest - including
that of future victims of these nasty
weapons - for the cables to be
posted. It's in Fairfax's commercial
interest to keep them under wraps".
More recently, by this stage learning
that an investigative story Holmes
into the whole affair was due to be
aired on national television,
journalistDr Dorling conceded that
since he produced the first WikiLeaks
scoop for Fairfax in December 2010,
in fact numerous parties had
requested access to the source
documents, including "non-
government organisations,
members of Federal Parliament, one
commercial enterprise, and two
foreign embassies".
In the same memo, Dr Dorling goes
on to acknowledge that he was fully
aware that at the same time, the
international treaty discussed in
many of the WikiLeaks documents
was to be immanently ratified into
domestic law. Curiously, Dr Dorling
reasons that he denied access to the
WikiLeaks cables to all of the
requesting parties because, in his
words:
"Since I am a journalist and not a
partisan for any particular cause, I
took the view that it would be
inappropriate for me to meet any of
these requests, no matter how
forcefully the demands for access
were made or my own views about
the merits or otherwise of their
particular political campaign or
other interests".