Private to Public and...Morals?

As we discussed the Panama Papers in class on Wednesday, one particular question rose to the forefront: “What causes documents that aren’t meant to be public to go public?” I believe some of my own questions are related to this issue: How do private-made-public documents catch and maintain the attention of a public? How is it that some people take years to make others in a certain public even care or do something about a problem, and then something like the Panama Paper leak immediately grabs the notice of a public so large it engulfs nations?

I think there are many, many multi-faceted answers to these questions, so I’m going to propose just one idea. But first, consider these excerpts from various news articles and note any thematic trends:

• True, the papers may not provide evidence of corruption involving these families. But they will strengthen perceptions that the elite enjoy enormous wealth and privilege, despite Mr Xi’s massive anti-corruption drive… The revelations could therefore pose a dilemma for Mr Xi. Does he push his anti-corruption campaign harder against some of the most influential families in China, or does he go easy on them, and tone down the anti-corruption campaign, which he has said he will not do? ~ “The Panama papers embarrass China’s leaders” by The Economist
•  John and Tony Podesta aren’t fooling anyone with this ruse. They are lobbyists for Vladimir Putin’s personal bank of choice, an arm of his Kremlin and its intelligence services. Since the brothers Podesta are presumably destined for very high-level White House jobs next January if the Democrats triumph in November at the polls, their relationship with Sberbank is something they—and Hillary Clinton—need to explain to the public. ~ “Panama Papers RevealClinton’s Kremlin Connection” by John Schindler, opinion piece in the Observer
•  Richard Burgon, the shadow Treasury minister, said Cameron’s admission showed a “crisis of morals” at the heart of the Conservative government. ~ “David Cameron admitshe profited from father's Panama offshore trust fund” by The Guardian

Okay, granted, what I asked you to do was very much directed by my own interpretation; to get the full context, check out the hyperlinked articles. One trend I noticed involved an implied tension between a future action and a current moral/ethical dilemma. Though this might be one of those “no-brainer” statements, it seems to me that publics are as much guided by issues of morality as much by practicality.

Publics are comprised both of rhetors and audiences, are they not? And audiences esteem rhetors they perceive to have a high ethos. An aspect of ethos involves practical wisdom “through the use of common sense and sound reason” (Palczewski 153). According to Christopher Lyle Johnstone, “Practical wisdom is the power of good deliberation. It is the excellence of the practical intellect, and its aim is to discover through deliberation ‘truth’ about rightness of desired ends. The objective of practical wisdom, therefore, is the apprehension of moral truth, of truth in the probable and contingent realm of action” (3).

Think of it this way: public discourse inherently involves a series of choices, both in the texts written and selected as well as the actions taken in response to those texts. Those choices are usually accompanied by some sort of justification/reasoning; we justify choice by explaining the rightness of its action. We don’t know who leaked the Panama Papers, but we could imagine what was going through his or her mind: “Should I leak these papers?” Apparently this person decided yes; I would argue that moral reasons probably most prompted this action. Why? Well, we use the word should to express obligation or duty. And personally, I think obligations and duties would hold little weight if they didn’t have a solid foundation in some type of morality.

So individuals may have their own moral code, but how would morals play a role in the public sphere? To say that publics don’t act according to morals might be inaccurate. Then what are those morals, and who decides which morals govern a particular public? In his analysis of a different scholar’s work, Andrew Lister proposes the idea of “moral compromise.” I haven’t read the entire article yet, but what I have read provides a lot of food for thought. If you’re interested in reading it yourself, this is the reference:

Lister, Andrew. "Public Reason and Moral Compromise." Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37.1 (2007): 1-34. Print.

Sources referenced:

Johnstone, Christopher. “An Aristotelian Trilogy: Ethics, Rhetoric, Politics, and the Search for Moral Truth.” Philosophy & Rhetoric 13.1 (1980): 1-24. Print.

Palczewski, Catherine Helen., Richard Ice, and John Fritch. Rhetoric in Civic Life. State College, PA: Strata Pub., 2012. Print.