News outlets face staggering challenges today with foreign intelligence services using the internet to plant forgeries in authentic and newsworthy documents. During the last election, “the Kremlin hacked American journalism.” The threat of these hacks calls for increased vigilance and caution in assessing information. (The New York Times, May 12, 2018, by Scott Shane)
Andy Greenberg of Wired, reported on May 25, 2017, that Russian hackers were altering “documents within those releases of hacked material, planting disinformation alongside legitimate leaks.” When journalists harvest the falsehoods for their stories, they run the risk of damaging their credibility and the standing of American journalism.