Stolen information poses a serious ethical dilemma
Over the past few weeks, WikiLeaks has been releasing hoards of hacked emails allegedly recovered from the account of John Podesta, the chairman of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Last Thursday, private researchers said that Russian actors were likely behind the hack. The Podesta leaks come in the wake of numerous other hacks by Russian hackers in an effort to influence the American election, according to government officials. The content of the Podesta emails ranges from the legitimately substantive to the completely frivolous. The emails include some significant material, such as the much-sought-after transcripts of speeches Clinton gave to Goldman Sachs. Mostly, however, the emails give unshocking details into Podesta’s relationships with political figures and the inter-workings of the Clintonian world.
These emails contain dense amounts of information regarding one of the most significant figures in American politics so, naturally, journalists have seized this opportunity to report on the plethora of new material from inside the Clinton campaign. However, in the wake of these and numerous other hacks, some have legitimately questioned the ethics of reporting on illegally released information. The job of the journalist is to report on worthy information, but the process of obtaining the information should not be ignored. News organizations should discern the ethical implications of publishing illegally stolen documents. Of course information within a prominent political person’s email account will provide weighty and juicy news fodder. But if the means of obtaining this information is through such dubious means, news organizations should, at the very least, seriously question using it.
In the past few months, Russian hackers have consistently attempted to hack into American accounts, servers and websites. With the public release of so many private emails, personal zones of privacy are being completely eroded. While the Podesta leaks may give journalists compelling material, it also shares the intimate details of individuals’ personal lives to the world. Every person, regardless of their public prominence, deserves a space to discuss and discern with confidants and friends. Releasing hacked emails completely undermines an individual’s sense of privacy. Nearly everyone says things over email that they wouldn’t share in public and emails can make comments made to friends seem far more important than they actually are.
While these recent leaks provide information about Hillary Clinton, they also come from illegally obtained documents never intended for public consumption. Today it is Clinton, but tomorrow it could be the Republicans or even the news organizations themselves. Reporting of these hacked documents opens the door for complete disregard of private correspondence of any figure in public life. As Sen. Marco Rubio said, “Further, I want to warn my fellow Republicans who may want to capitalize politically on these leaks: Today it is the Democrats. Tomorrow it could be us.”
Christina Wilkes is a senior majoring in political science and communication.
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The Pentagon Papers were released by Daniel Ellsberg who had worked on the study, and first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of The New York Times in 1971. They were classified documents and Ellsberg broke the law to release them and the press was complicit by publishing the material. It already was the Republicans who got burned (for you kids who don’t know your recent history, Nixon, a Republican, was President at the time). BTW the Russian hackers thing is not proven at this point. You are repeating a suspicion, not a fact. And Podesta is a sleazebag of the first order. If you want to keep your government from being sold, you want to encourage the criminals to rat out the guilty. Right now Hilly and Billy take money from oppressive regimes seeking to buy influence. Fact. Deal with it.