gumboot
lorcutus.tolere
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2006
- Messages
- 25,327
Until now I've not been particularly interested in the Wikileaks diplomatic cable release. While it might be mildly interesting to see the inner workings of US diplomacy, as I'm not an American, nor in a nation that's particularly closely aligned with America, the significance of the information revealed is not great for me.
However, today Wikileaks have given to "The New Zealand Herald" a large quantity of diplomatic cables from the US Embassy in Wellington, NZ.
The newspaper is hosting the cables on their website, but more interestingly, their political writers and editors and columnists are now having a field day "analysing" these articles.
And herein, I think, lies the true worrying danger of these Wikileak releases.
Your average person is not going to go through and read all the actual diplomatic cables. That's a labourious task, and the way the newspapers present the data, their own articles and analysis is readily accessible, but the cables less so. Most people are going to read the summaries by the newspaper staff and leave it at that. Now, that's fine, if the analysis is accurate. But what if it isn't?
I've just come across a cable from the US Embassy which is an assessment of the pharmaceutical setup in NZ, and the problems US drug companies are having trying to get their products into the market.
The newspaper categorises this cable as evidence of US pharmaceutical companies trying to meddle in NZ government affairs, and of the US government helping them. Examples include a off-hand mention that the industry tried to remove Helen Clarke as Minister of Health in 1990 (at the time of the cable Clarke was Prime Minister), and examples of pharmaceutical companies using the issue as a bargaining chip in a Free Trade Agreement discussion between USA and NZ. Opinion pieces talk of New Zealanders becoming more distrustful of big business.
HOWEVER...
If you actually read the cable in question, you get quite a dramatically different picture. Some of the positions held in the Herald analysis is just outright backwards, for example on the FTA matter, the cable actually states:
"Meanwhile, Geoff Dangerfield, chief executive of the New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development, told a U.S. drug company that his government terminated its study of patent term extension for pharmaceuticals to keep the issue as a bargaining chip in the event of FTA negotiations."
The cable is a biting criticism of NZ's health system, criticising the way the government subsidises a limited number of drugs, and is heavily hostile to the pharmaceutical industry. The end result being that patients have a very limited range of drugs they can use.
As examples:
It's not pharmaceutical companies that New Zealanders should be upset at, as the Herald implies, but the New Zealand government.
The concern is that because most people aren't going to read the actual cable, but rather the newspaper summaries, and because the newspaper summaries are misleading, biased, or just outright false, people are not getting an honest picture.
I've been churning my way through the cables, and consistently the picture is of a Labour Government (most of the cables were sent during the previous government) that acts like a stroppy willful child, refusing to cooperate in even basic ways with the USA, based on a blind ideological attitude.
Some of the events are just embarassing, such as the US Embassy's communications in response to Labour's election campaigning claims that the US Government was essentially in control of the other major party's policy. The US Embassy cables make it clear that not only is this false, but the US Embassy was consistently at pains to keep out of NZ politics and try work with the government of the day as best it can.
It's a little funny, but these cables actually show the US (at least the US representatives in this country) in a pretty good light, and make our (former) government look like idiots. It's a shame that the newspaper has decided to paint a very different picture.
So, in conclusion, I am curious as to whether anyone else has come across a similar situation, where the media has been presenting the diplomatic cables in a very different light to the actual contents. Is this the terrible behaviour of one particularly bad media outlet, or part of a pattern?
Finally as an added addendum, I thought I'd share an interesting and quite shocking little discovery from the cables.
According to the US diplomatic mission the introduction of New Zealand's anti-nuclear policy in the 1980's was driven by a desire to cut military spending. Withdrawal or dismissal from ANZUS was seen as a likely consequence of the ban, and would enable the country to justify cuts at a time of financial trouble.
What's so ground-shattering about this revelation is that the Labour Party, which was government at the time, has construction the anti-nuclear stance into an event of legendary status so great it has become one of the defining features of the national psyche. The image of little NZ standing up to big bad USA on an ideological position has the status of folk-lore in this country. To learn that the event was actually a cold calculating financial decision, and that the government lied to the country about their true motivations, utterly undermines the entire mythos of the event. Most remarkable, perhaps is the revelation that expulsion from the ANZUS Treaty was part of the plan. This indeed happened, but the government of the day utilised it to further the mythos by painting the USA as a stroppy and mean spirited nation, with Labour claiming there was no reason our policy should harm the treaty.
Interesting stuff.
However, today Wikileaks have given to "The New Zealand Herald" a large quantity of diplomatic cables from the US Embassy in Wellington, NZ.
The newspaper is hosting the cables on their website, but more interestingly, their political writers and editors and columnists are now having a field day "analysing" these articles.
And herein, I think, lies the true worrying danger of these Wikileak releases.
Your average person is not going to go through and read all the actual diplomatic cables. That's a labourious task, and the way the newspapers present the data, their own articles and analysis is readily accessible, but the cables less so. Most people are going to read the summaries by the newspaper staff and leave it at that. Now, that's fine, if the analysis is accurate. But what if it isn't?
I've just come across a cable from the US Embassy which is an assessment of the pharmaceutical setup in NZ, and the problems US drug companies are having trying to get their products into the market.
The newspaper categorises this cable as evidence of US pharmaceutical companies trying to meddle in NZ government affairs, and of the US government helping them. Examples include a off-hand mention that the industry tried to remove Helen Clarke as Minister of Health in 1990 (at the time of the cable Clarke was Prime Minister), and examples of pharmaceutical companies using the issue as a bargaining chip in a Free Trade Agreement discussion between USA and NZ. Opinion pieces talk of New Zealanders becoming more distrustful of big business.
HOWEVER...
If you actually read the cable in question, you get quite a dramatically different picture. Some of the positions held in the Herald analysis is just outright backwards, for example on the FTA matter, the cable actually states:
"Meanwhile, Geoff Dangerfield, chief executive of the New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development, told a U.S. drug company that his government terminated its study of patent term extension for pharmaceuticals to keep the issue as a bargaining chip in the event of FTA negotiations."
The cable is a biting criticism of NZ's health system, criticising the way the government subsidises a limited number of drugs, and is heavily hostile to the pharmaceutical industry. The end result being that patients have a very limited range of drugs they can use.
As examples:
It's not pharmaceutical companies that New Zealanders should be upset at, as the Herald implies, but the New Zealand government.
The concern is that because most people aren't going to read the actual cable, but rather the newspaper summaries, and because the newspaper summaries are misleading, biased, or just outright false, people are not getting an honest picture.
I've been churning my way through the cables, and consistently the picture is of a Labour Government (most of the cables were sent during the previous government) that acts like a stroppy willful child, refusing to cooperate in even basic ways with the USA, based on a blind ideological attitude.
Some of the events are just embarassing, such as the US Embassy's communications in response to Labour's election campaigning claims that the US Government was essentially in control of the other major party's policy. The US Embassy cables make it clear that not only is this false, but the US Embassy was consistently at pains to keep out of NZ politics and try work with the government of the day as best it can.
It's a little funny, but these cables actually show the US (at least the US representatives in this country) in a pretty good light, and make our (former) government look like idiots. It's a shame that the newspaper has decided to paint a very different picture.
So, in conclusion, I am curious as to whether anyone else has come across a similar situation, where the media has been presenting the diplomatic cables in a very different light to the actual contents. Is this the terrible behaviour of one particularly bad media outlet, or part of a pattern?
Finally as an added addendum, I thought I'd share an interesting and quite shocking little discovery from the cables.
According to the US diplomatic mission the introduction of New Zealand's anti-nuclear policy in the 1980's was driven by a desire to cut military spending. Withdrawal or dismissal from ANZUS was seen as a likely consequence of the ban, and would enable the country to justify cuts at a time of financial trouble.
What's so ground-shattering about this revelation is that the Labour Party, which was government at the time, has construction the anti-nuclear stance into an event of legendary status so great it has become one of the defining features of the national psyche. The image of little NZ standing up to big bad USA on an ideological position has the status of folk-lore in this country. To learn that the event was actually a cold calculating financial decision, and that the government lied to the country about their true motivations, utterly undermines the entire mythos of the event. Most remarkable, perhaps is the revelation that expulsion from the ANZUS Treaty was part of the plan. This indeed happened, but the government of the day utilised it to further the mythos by painting the USA as a stroppy and mean spirited nation, with Labour claiming there was no reason our policy should harm the treaty.
Interesting stuff.
