Kathleen Hall Jamieson in the Boston Globe, April 23, 2019, argues that the media erred in reporting hacked information from the Democrats during the 2016 presidential election without including enough details of the hacking. There should have been more pointed references to the illegality of the hacks obtained by Russian cyber attack. And rather than accrediting the information to WikiLeaks, it should have been attributed more specifically to Julian Assange and Russian operatives. Given that context, viewers would be more likely to ask, “Why would the Russians and Assange want to defeat the Democratic nominee?”
CNN reporting shows that there is no movement to change rules about publishing hacked information, but there is widespread acknowledgement that such information must be published carefully with full context. Todd Gitlin of the Columbia Journalism School suggests some guidelines, that hacked news must be published with disclosure of the hackers’ identity and that the news must add significantly to public knowledge. (CNN, April 24, 2019, by Oliver Darcy and Donie Sullivan)