Truth, Power and the Rehabilitation of the Facts

This paper is an attempt to analyze the age-old phenomenon of leaks - the deliberate disclosure of secret information - and its relationship with the principle of transparency in a democracy. Secrets might be deliberately leaked by the political establishment, which works to reproduce a negative dialectic in the public's handling of politics. Leaks can also take the form of public scandals that the press exposes as part of its function and as the product of the balance between the media and political establishments. Thirdly, there are what we might term denunciatory leaks, which are performed by a dissident or an actor from outside the establishment, and are generally motivated by reasons that have no bearing on the relations connected with the reproduction of the political and media establishments.