Over Thanksgiving I watched “Fair Game” (the Valerie Plame story, the spy outed by Scooter Libby) with my parents. What did I take from this movie and the conversations we had after the credits rolled? A heightened sense of what I already knew before I walked into the theater: that national security and covert intelligence are more important than what civilians might understand.

Yes, transparency is important. But so is context and responsible reporting (aka journalism), and not just doing something “because I can.”

I agree with journalist and blogger Gary Goldhammer, who wrote this in his blog, Below the Fold:

“According to WikiLeaks, ‘publishing improves transparency, and this transparency creates a better society for all people.’…yes, but not always. Transparency also requires judgment and analysis. Transparency unchecked will get people killed.”

Making photocopies of classified documents willy-nilly and posting them on the web is the behavior of a hacker, not a journalist. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward were journalists. Julian Assange and his cohorts are hackers. I also know that many librarians side with Assange & Co. because “Information wants to be free.”

As a librarian, I *do* believe information should be free. But I also believe that information should be organized and contextualized. My job as a librarian is to help organize and contextualize information, and I am grateful for the work already done by journalists and librarians to find context not only for the WikiLeaks themselves, but also for what the Leaks mean for the future of journalism, the Internet, transparency, and national security.

The way we share information is changing at a breakneck speed and the Leaks are for better or worse a part of that change. My hope is that we would continue to have the maturity to find context for the changes in information sharing and to help patrons understand that context. That is why I got my Masters in Library Science, after all.

In answer to Leigh Anne’s questions about the book that is forthcoming, YES, I would buy the book for my library. Yes, I would restock it if it was stolen. I would do this for the same reason that I have no problem knowing that Tucker Max books live on my library’s shelves. To every book, their reader.

I read somewhere that being an adult was the ability to hold two opposing ideas in your brain without going crazy. That’s where I stand with WikiLeaks. Scrambled eggs with peppers, red and green.