The Moral Maze (BBC Radio 4, 27 October) focused on WikiLeaks' publication of thousands of secret documents detailing a catalogue of torture, friendly fire deaths and casual killings in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
The website's spokesman, Kristin Hraffnson, was cross-examined by a panel including Tony Blair's former strategy chief Matthew Taylor and Claire Fox from the think-tank The Institute of Ideas.
The debate boiled down to whether journalists are in a better position than politicians to decide what's in the public interest; whether "dumping" information in the public domain is responsible behaviour; and if that information, shorn of analysis and interpretation, does more potential harm than good.
Matthew Taylor proposed a scenario where WikiLeaks received a document disclosing the most likely sites for a terrorist attack in the UK - sites that were impossible to make safer: how would Hraffnson decide whether or not to publish such information? And was it not for elected politicians to decide if and when information that is potentially harmful to national security should be allowed into the public arena?
Hraffnson replied:
"Politicians have an eagerness to keep everything secret, and we have been going down that path in the past decade or so, especially in the US, to put everything in that category, and that is a wrong path and it needs to be turned round."
Claire Fox dismissed the content of WikiLeaks' online revelations as tit-bits of information:
"Are you telling me that it took this revelation for you to think that there possibly was torture? I mean, there's been endless discussion in the public domain about torture."
The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has described the information revealed in the 400,000 documents as "extraordinarily serious" allegations about the behaviour of US and UK troops in Iraq, specifically in handing over prisoners to Iraqi units known to practise torture.
The big question for me was not whether WikiLeaks should have published the information; it was the point about a lack of interpretation. Claire Fox, although the hectoring irritated me, made a good point about challenging a whistleblower's trustworthiness.
Journalists must ask themselves why somebody would want to rat on an organisation. Is it simply, as Fox argues, that the concept of loyalty has fallen by the wayside, or is it that somebody has an axe to grind or bears a grudge?
Simply put, not all whistleblowers have altruistic motives, and we shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking that they do.
Do I trust this person? Why are they telling me this? Do I believe what they're telling me?
Ultimately, the WikiLeaks story was that previously suppressed information was disclosed on the web. I'm sure I'm not alone in waiting for all those leads to be followed up. But right now there seems little appetite to pursue them.
