It is perplexing that John Birmingham seems to believe that WikiLeaks should be held to a standard that he deems unnecessary in his own work (‘The Man who Fell to Earth’, October 2010). He makes the argument that WikiLeaks gave improper context to Collateral Murder, yet sees no apparent similarity in his extensive introduction detailing largely irrelevant Taliban brutality. More absurdly, he contends that because a single journalist reported on the events, “… there was no need for any ‘leaking’ …”. Is this serious? Even the vaguest notion of justice should imply that a hostile act that resulted in the deaths of human beings deserves the maximum possible transparency. Rather than creating an asymmetry in the media landscape as Birmingham proposes, WikiLeaks is at last providing a genuine symmetry, exposing both the private mind and the public fist of government.  The deeper question is why democracies are so afraid of our unfiltered access to this information.

Angus Donohoo

North Sydney, NSW