USADaily -
It’s time for the media to ask if it is ethical to keep publishing the contents of stolen emails, presumably hacked by Russian intelligence, and intended to swing the presidential election for Donald Trump.
In the last few days, we’ve had leaked (stolen) emails that purported to be the transcripts of Hillary Clinton’s speeches, and other emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
These aren’t the first stolen emails to be released. Earlier this year, we saw the publication of what are claimed to be nearly 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee, and additional emails from the Clinton Foundation, among others.
The common thread in nearly all of the hacks is the intent to harm Hillary Clinton’s bid for the White House. This, and the fact that many of the hacks are now assumed to be the work of Russian intelligence, raises the question of whether US media and others should be helping to disseminate this stolen material.
1. But the information is newsworthy.
Yes, the information stolen from organizations and individuals associated with Hillary Clinton is certainly interesting. Also interesting would be files stolen from Hillary’s home or office, as would recordings from eavesdropping devices planted in her home, office and on her person. Would the media take such information and publish it?
2. Does intent matter?
The US government has now officially charged Russian intelligence with being behind many, and perhaps all, of these hacks. The Russian’s motive is to help Donald Trump win, and more generally to sow confusion surrounding the US elections. This raises two questions: 1) Should the media be wittingly doing the bidding of Russian intelligence; and 2) Is it ethical for the media to actively participate in a plan to swing the US election to one candidate.
While there would be ethical questions even were both candidates hacked, that would at least potentially level the playing field. In this case, the hacks are primarily against one candidate, and are intended to make that candidate lose at the ballot box. The fact that the stolen information is one-sided, and thus the media cannot be fair and equal in how its treats the information — there are no Trump emails to balance the Clinton emails — potentially raises a serious question of the overall fairness of the ongoing reporting.
3. Frequency of the leak.
There’s also something to be said about the frequency of the leaks. Perhaps — perhaps — one big leak might be newsworthy. But even were I to concede that point — and I don’t — this daily leaking of more stolen material is intended to disrupt the campaign coverage, continually throw Hillary off guard, and ultimately sway the voters to Trump.
It’s an interesting debate, since everyone leaks information to the media in an effort to help their candidate or cause. And if the information is newsworthy, the media runs with it. The difference in this case is that the information is stolen, and is part of a foreign intelligence operation to influence our election. That has to give the media additional pause.
4. Veracity of the stolen documents
Finally, who knows if any of these leaks are even real? I saw a leaked “Clinton speech” the other day that wasn’t even written in proper English. It was clear that a non-native speaker of English wrote the entire thing. So how does the media know whether any of these tens of thousands of documents are even real? Russian intelligence has likely buried a few particularly juicy, and utterly fake, pages inside those piles of stolen emails. How can the media possibly know what’s real and what isn’t?
And is it really fair to ask the Clinton campaign to sift through tens of thousands of pages of documents, one month before the election, to help the media verify what’s truth and what’s Russian dezinformatsiya? And for that matter, is it fair to publish the information simply because the campaign “had its chance” to deny the veracity and didn’t?
Eric Zorn with the Chicago Tribune weighed in on this issue as well:
Disseminating hacked email is abetting a crime in a way that offers encouragement and opportunity to future criminals.
And since there is strong suspicion that the Russians are WikiLeaks’ source for the DNC trove, that crime may be international espionage.
It would be a lot to ask any one news organization to skirt around a story this big on the dainty grounds of principle.
But it’s not too much to ask the mainstream media in general to think twice about being an eager conduit for stolen goods. And since there will be many more next times in the Era of the Big Leak, to at least agonize a bit before handing megaphones to the crooks.
I get that all of this is newsworthy. But this is not a normal leak of information. These are stolen documents, likely stolen by foreign intelligence operatives. And I’ll go one step further than Zorn: This is also an effort to disrupt, and throw the results of, our presidential election. That last point in particular gives me pause. And it ought to give our media the same.
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