{"id":1764,"date":"2016-09-15T08:18:52","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T14:18:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sebersole.wordpress.com\/?p=1764"},"modified":"2016-09-15T08:18:52","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T14:18:52","slug":"russian-hackers-feed-us-journalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/russian-hackers-feed-us-journalists\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian Hackers Feed US Journalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HackerYou may have seen news reports about emails and other documents that have recently been released to the public after they were obtained by hackers, who are likely of Russian origin. Documents were obtained from Democratic National Committee<\/a> computers, the Hillary Clinton campaign<\/a>, and George Soros<\/a>, a billionaire and liberal donor, earlier this summer. More recently, former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s emails were hacked. Some have speculated<\/a> that Russia is targeting Democrats in order to sway public opinion towards Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Cyber warfare is not new, but this meddling by foreign countries in political matters\u00a0on the eve of a Presidential election is cause\u00a0for concern.<\/p>\n

WikiLeaks, the organization founded by Julian Assange<\/a>, and DCLeaks<\/a> have\u00a0published the leaked documents. Little is known about DCLeaks. While they claim to be a group of “American hacktivists”,\u00a0some have speculated that Russian\u00a0intelligence\u00a0created DCLeaks for the\u00a0express purpose of leaking sensitive data intended to manipulate the upcoming election.<\/p>\n

But leaked information still needs a channel or conduit (aka “medium”) to reach its intended target audience…the American people. That is where journalists come in. Once private emails and other sensitive information is uploaded to the DCLeaks website<\/a>, news\/gossip websites, such as BuzzFeed, report on the privacy breach and the private information. Journalists working for established media outlets such as the New York Times<\/em>, NBC Nightly News<\/em>, CNN and Fox News file stories about the “breaking” news and these front-page and top-of-the-hour reports are\u00a0seen by millions. Social media users take\u00a0snippets of journalistic candy and spread it even further and wider. And yes, I recognize that this blog post is\u00a0part of the problem!<\/p>\n

Russian hackers, using the moniker Fancy Bear, have also hacked the World\u00a0Anti-Doping Agency and released medical records from Olympic athletes from numerous countries, including celebrity athletes such as Simone Biles and the Williams sisters. Poynter.org, a journalism think-tank asked an important question: should journalists report on leaked information that was obtained illegally? You can read more here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Whether it is private medical information or personal emails, questions remain. Should anonymous criminals with potentially nefarious motives be allowed to influence our culture and politics?, and should American journalists assist and abet them in the process?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may have seen news reports about emails and other documents that have recently been released to the public after they were obtained by hackers, who are likely of Russian origin. Documents were obtained from Democratic National Committee computers, the Hillary Clinton campaign, and George Soros, a billionaire and liberal donor, earlier this summer. More … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Russian Hackers Feed US Journalists”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,11,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-journalism","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}