Saturday, December 11, 2010

What are the ethics...

..of a Catholic blogger using material taken from Wikileaks?

Recent spillage of confidential memos sent from the British Ambassador to the Holy See to various recipients raises this issue. Should be "Catholic blogosphere" be so gleeful about gossiping that the more important question of the immorality of using sneaked material isn't tackled?

4 comments:

Richard Collins said...

Do you mean gossiping or do you mean making serious comment, possibly in a humourous style.
Once material is in the public domain I see no reason to refrain from commenting. If it was leaked directly to an individual then the answer would, of course, be no.

Elizabeth said...

Our MP wrote about the leaks in our local paper and he made some important points. He said that the material was stolen, and that information published (he specified what that was)had put people's lives at risk in Afghanistan. I don't think anyone should be gleeful about the leaks.

Malcolm said...

Detraction (like libel or slander but true) is considered to be a sin, unless the motive is to prevent the person from doing further harm, for instance if a man who take bribes runs for public office you may expose the fact that he takes bribes, but you may not expose the fact if he works as a schoolteacher, if the bribes are unrelated to his employment.

The same goes for negative information about Church officials.

Manny said...

Yes, I agree with Richard. Once something is already out, commenting on it is not unethical. It's already exposed information. But, as Malcom points out, what would be unethical is passing on slander, whether it be leaked information or any unproven information. It's the fact that it's slanderous that makes it unethical, not the fact that it was leaked.

I might as well agree with Elizabeth too; wikileaks should not be tolerated. People need to be held accountable and jailed.