> Yes, concealing adverse information about public figures, particularly public officials, is a social harm promoted by legalized blackmail.
I'd say that argument only holds water if you're going beyond simply criminalizing blackmail and actually saying that there is a legal obligation to report any such information, such that agreeing not to reveal the information for a price means failing in that duty (assuming you keep to the agreement). In that case blackmail is just a special case of soliciting a bribe. However, the idea that arbitrary private citizens are obligated to publish any and all damaging information they might obtain about a public figure seems like a rather hard sell.
The incentive structure works without a mandate, because there is a market for public interest information (both via news media and interested parties). Criminalizing blackmail negated a countervailing incentive, but that doesn't make it necessary to criminalize non-reporting generally to create an incentive to report.
I'm not interested in "incentives". The purpose of law is justice, not social engineering. When lawmakers play at social engineering they make the law unjust.
If concealing information about public figures results in "social harm" then that "social harm" is exactly the same regardless of whether the information is concealed for the sake of profit. When someone has been harmed by another person's actions the offender has a duty to make the victim(s) whole. The offender's motive for causing the harm is irrelevant.
(I'm glossing over the distinction between "social harm" and the actual harm which would be necessary to justify responding with force, but that's a topic for another day.)
> 'm not interested in "incentives". The purpose of law is justice, not social engineering.
The purpose of law has always been social engineering. Various concepts of justice may either provide the desired outcome toward which that engineering is directed, and appeal to some concepts of justice may be an integral component of how law seeks to acheive the outcome to which it is directed, but it is all, invariably, social engineering.
The news media won't reward me anything but a pat on the head for revealing a politician's unsavory history, and as for interested parties paying for it... The politician in question is 100% an interested party.
Certainly bribery should be illegal and also attempts at bribery should be made public. Don't you think? Certainly I think it's highly concerning when politicians suggest bribery should be legal.
I'd say that argument only holds water if you're going beyond simply criminalizing blackmail and actually saying that there is a legal obligation to report any such information, such that agreeing not to reveal the information for a price means failing in that duty (assuming you keep to the agreement). In that case blackmail is just a special case of soliciting a bribe. However, the idea that arbitrary private citizens are obligated to publish any and all damaging information they might obtain about a public figure seems like a rather hard sell.