Hacker-Loving, Secrecy-Hating Guardian Asks Readers to Help Police Catch Climategate Leaker

You wouldn’t expect Britain’s hard-left Guardian newspaper to be overjoyed about the release of the ‘Climategate 2′ emails, further undermining as they do the reputation of key players in the global warming industry. However, you might at least expect the paper to respect the spirit of inquiry, and the desire for openness and honesty, behind the release of the correspondence – this, after all, is the paper that took a leading role in publishing the Wikileaks documents.

On the contrary, the paper is asking its readers to help it – and the police – track down those responsible for the leaks. At the paper’s environment blog, Leo Hickman has posted the ‘README’ text file that accompanies the emails, inviting readers to “offer your own thoughts, speculations and theories about what this file might tell us about the hacker’s profile (and the police who are sure to be also scrutinising it for potential clues)”. Another Guardian blogger, Damian Carrington, complains that the ‘real scandal’ here is not climate scientists manipulating data, and colluding to suppress dissenting opinions – it’s that the leakers haven’t been caught.

To the casual observer it might seem odd that a paper which champions investigative journalism and rails against secrecy should be seeking to identify the ‘hacker’ and have him bought to justice. But, as I pointed out when writing about the tabloid phone-hacking scandal in Britain earlier this year, the Guardian, along with the rest of the left-wing media, is only in favor of the release of confidential material – whether as a result of ‘hacking’ or of investigative journalism – when it advances the interests of the left.

Let’s be clear about this: the Guardian would have no qualms about publishing information damaging to a Conservative politician in Britain, or a Republican presidential candidate in the US, or the state of Israel, or big business – even if that information had been extracted as a result of waterboarding carried out personally by Sarah Palin.

Yes, of course it’s hypocrisy – but leftists can no more avoid being hypocrites than they can avoid breathing.