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Ellison's Must Read of the Day

December 15, 2014

My must read of the day, "The Sony Hack and the Yellow Press," by Aaron Sorkin, in the New York Times:

THREE weeks ago Sony Pictures Entertainment was the victim of a massive cyberattack by an outlaw group calling itself the Guardians of Peace. They breached Sony’s security and stole tens of thousands of internal documents and emails.

Then they left a threat. The Guardians said they were going to make these private documents public if the studio went ahead with its planned release of "The Interview," a comedy with Seth Rogen and James Franco in which the two are tasked by the Central Intelligence Agency to whack the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Then they left another threat, this one accompanied by violent and disturbing imagery. "Not only you but your family will be in danger," read a message to all Sony employees. The Federal Bureau of Investigation won’t say much, but it says the hack is sophisticated and backed by a lot of money.

The Guardians just had to lob the ball; they knew our media would crash the boards and slam it in. First, salaries were published. Not by the hackers, but by American news outlets.

I always think of news as falling into two broad categories: the stories the public wants to hear, and the stories the public needs to hear.

The Sony hacking story began as one that the public needed to hear, but with the addition of glamorous names and private emails it became one we wanted to hear, and the reports that followed quickly divulged into useless gossip.

Sorkin giving the lecture is a bit rich. He is, after all, part of a world that thrives on gossip—a place that’s eager to make the talentless Paris Hiltons of the world relevant, while simultaneously bolstering a culture of eating disorders, body dysmorphia, and general feelings inadequacy. Hollywood can be a terrible place, and most days it feels like it’s far more concerned with money than art, but Sorkin has a point—even if it’s an instance of the pot calling the kettle black.

Are the outlets that published information, which came to them through the hackers, "morally treasonous and spectacularly dishonorable?" Maybe, but if they are it’s not because they chose to publish that information. Their choice to proceed with the stories proves that many members of the press have become so consumed with rapid information that they fail to pause and ask what the point is.

News has a purpose, and often it seems rare that outlets remember what that is.

News is not meant to be a massive dump of information, and it’s not meant to be valuable simply because it will "blow up on the Internet." If the potential for clicks is the primary value of an article, it’s not something that should constitute news or be peddled by legitimate news reporting organizations.

Journalists should produce work that’s purposeful. Otherwise we’ll all just be part of tabloid media which, every once in a while, gets a bit of gossip that actually matters—but everything in between is meaningless shit that’s skimmed over when the checkout line gets long.

News must have a purpose. It must educate the public, and these are stories that provide no real information—all they do is help further the cause of criminals. Journalists should be above that and be attentive enough to recognize when delinquents are exploiting a greedy desire for web-traffic to aide in the full commitment of a crime.

I tend to lean on the side that says the more information available to the public, the better—but I can’t see the real need for reporting the details of private, stolen material.