Be careful what you say, even in confidence; the world's listening

12/5/2010 11:34 PM
Gene Owens
Aiken Standard

I empathized with Katie Couric when I learned about her open-mike comments on the Palin family after Gov. Sarah was chosen as John McCain's running mate.

Katie was going over Palin's bio with her news team when she came to the name of her eldest son, Track.

"Where the h--- do they get these?" she asked, flashing a pearly smile. And when she read that the governor's parents were out hunting caribou when they got the news of the selection, she cracked, "You can't make this up."

It's understandable small talk when you're chatting in private with friends and colleagues. It's embarrassing when the word gets back to the object of your levity.

But Katie's embarrassment is small-time when compared to the embarrassment felt around the world over the release of secret diplomatic cables by a hacker who runs a website called WikiLeaks.

How would you like to be the king of Saudi Arabia and have it get back to the president of Pakistan that you called him the biggest obstacle to progress in that country and that "when the head is rotten, it affects the whole body"?

How would you like to be the U.S. ambassador to Eritrea and let it get back to the despotic leaders of that little country on the Horn of Africa that you told your bosses, "Eritrean officials are ignorant or lying"?

How would you like to be Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the eccentric leader of Libya, and have the world told that you're spending most of your time with your voluptuous Ukrainian nurse? And how would you like to be the diplomat who confidentially disclosed that juicy bit of gossip to his superiors?

If you're realistic, you know that people say things behind your back that they wouldn't want you to hear - and that you probably wouldn't want to hear.

In the case of Couric, Palin is using the "gotcha" tape to show that the CBS anchor was biased against her during the presidential campaign and therefore made the Alaska governor look bad during their famous interview.

News flash: It would be wretchedly hard to find anybody in any news organization that isn't biased one way or the other in a presidential race. Good journalists recognize their biases and struggle for objectivity in spite of them. Bad journalists let their biases bleed through their reportage.

And most journalists have a strain of cynicism - or at least irreverence - that surfaces in the privacy of conversations among themselves. It's one way of keeping your equilibrium in a wacko world.

So yeah, I can imagine even a conservative Republican looking over Palin's bio, coming across the unconventional names of her kids and saying "Where the h--- do they get these," especially when she's reading up on the candidate for the first time. And Palin's folks out caribou hunting when the word reaches them? It's a classic "You gotta be kidding me" situation.

But that doesn't explain why the interview turned into a fiasco for Palin. The governor was like a rookie up from the minors who was not yet ready for the big leagues. The questions Katie asked her were fair questions, and they were asked in a neutral way. The governor, who is normally articulate and quick-witted, was poorly prepped. The responsibility for the debacle lies with her and her handlers, not with her interviewer.

As for the kings and presidents and ambassadors who are being embarrassed by the blogger's harvest of "gotchas," I say a pox on the leakers instead of the speakers.

There are times when candor is necessary; when one has to speak in the confidence that what you say will go no farther than the ears you're speaking into.

I remember once when a new executive editor called me into his office and asked for my candid appraisal of the people who supervised me.

"Let's have it with the bark off," he said.

I gave it to him as honestly as I could, and I think it helped him lift the newspaper a notch or two above the mediocrity in which it had wallowed for years.

Later, I was asked for written appraisals of the people who worked under me. I considered them all to be friends, but I felt that I owed top management candid assessments. The appraisals were a long way from scathing, and I thought they reflected my generally positive feelings toward my staff. But when one of the staffers found the memos unguarded and shared them with his fellow workers, it created some tensions.

So I can understand the anxiety Secretary of State Hillary Clinton must feel as she engages in damage control with the foreign governments who are now hearing what the United States has said about them to their backs. And I can understand the angst foreign diplomats may feel as they wonder which of their unguarded comments might get back to the officials who have the power to fire them and even to execute them.

Diplomacy is like liver pudding coated with chocolate. It's supposed to look nice on the outside, but the inside is smelly and messy. Maybe the public needs to know all the smelly and messy details. But once they learn about them, North Korea will still have nuclear arms and a recklessly contemptuous attitude toward the rest of the world; Iran will still be eager to flex its nuclear muscles; China will continue to be on the rise, hoping to emulate the West's technology while spurning its human-rights values; and Russia will still be a ponderous giant unsure of whether it wants to take the plunge into democracy or to retreat into its traditional tyranny.

And the hackers out there will continue to make it difficult to have a confidential conversation.