Iranian Hackers Stole Emails and Reports from the Trump Campaign. The Media Is Waiting to Publish That Material For a Short Time.

The media can't rush to publish this information, hacked by an enemy foreign regime, after they refused to publish information from Hunter Biden's laptop, pretending that that was hacked by Russia.

They are pretending to impose this rule even-handedly as they scheme about how to publish it. Or how to get leftwing blogs to publish it, which they can then cite.

They don't admit that, but of course, that's exactly what's going on.

The Washington Post:

Why newsrooms haven't published leaked Trump campaign documents The Trump campaign said the documents from a mysterious source came from an Iranian hack. The FBI is now investigating.

An alleged Iranian hacking operation that the Donald Trump campaign says leaked internal documents to reporters has run into a surprising problem: So far, newsrooms have been reluctant to run with the material.

Over the past few weeks, reporters at Politico, The Washington Post and the New York Times received emails from a mysterious figure who called himself "Robert," offering internal Trump campaign documents, most notably a 271-page one listing JD Vance's potential vulnerabilities as a running mate, apparently compiled well before Trump picked the Republican senator from Ohio.

The FBI is now investigating alleged Iranian hacking attempts, which also targeted the Biden-Harris campaign. Longtime Trump friend Roger Stone confirmed to The Post on Monday that his email account had been compromised.

All of it -- an alleged hacker hiding behind a pseudonym offering internal documents of questionable news value -- has echoes of the Russian hacks of Democratic campaign emails in 2016, which were then published by WikiLeaks and eagerly picked over by the press.

No, the press was not "eager" to pick over them. But you can see the Washington Post preparing the way for its own soon-to-come Sudden Reversal on whether to publicize data hacked by enemy foreign governments.

Now, eight years later, media organizations are being tested again with how best to cover news from an alleged hack, without playing into the hands of foreign actors looking to interfere in American elections. For now, the decision among the outlets that received the documents has been not to publish them, focusing instead on the possible hack itself.

Eight years later? Surely you mean four years later, because it was four years ago that the media presented a united Marxist front in refusing to report on the Hunter Biden laptop, falsely claiming it was #Hacked by #RUSSIANAGENTS.

Are you seriously going to pretend that away, Washington Post?

Spoiler: Yes they are.

After receiving the #Hacked emails, Politico immediately "confirmed the document's authenticity."

They still haven't confirmed the Hunter Biden laptop, have they?

Reporters confirmed the document's authenticity, then attempted to learn the individual's identity; the emailer refused to get on the phone but said there was additional information to share. When Politico pressed how they got the documents, the person wrote back: "I suggest you don't be curious about where I got them from. Any answer to this question, will compromise me and also legally restricts you from publishing them."

Then Microsoft revealed early Friday that Iranian hackers had tried to get into the email account of a "high-ranking official" in a presidential campaign by using a former senior adviser's email address that had already been compromised; The Post reported that that was a reference to the Trump campaign, citing a person familiar with Microsoft's work.

...

In 2016, Trump relished Russian hacks of Democratic campaign emails, once asking the country to find more of Hillary Clinton's emails with the phrase, "Russia, if you're listening."

Again, they're making the case for publishing the hacked data, just skipping over the years they spent attempting to get anyone publishing the Hunter Biden laptop disclosures deplatformed.

But in the aftermath of its own possible hack, the Trump campaign told reporters that to publish the material would be assisting a foreign state actor in undermining democracy. "Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America's enemies and doing exactly what they want," Steven Cheung, a campaign spokesman, said in a statement.

...

The decision for newsrooms to not publish the Vance materials -- a compilation of publicly available records and statements, including Vance's past criticisms of Trump -- appeared to be more straightforward because they also didn't reach a high level of public interest.

"In the end, it didn't seem fresh or new enough," Murray said.

Journalists' primary loyalty is to their audience and to giving them the information they want and need, said Kelly McBride, NPR's public editor and chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute. And before 2016, the general thinking was that, even with hacked materials, "if there's something interesting in there, then of course you're going to report it."

But with foreign state actors increasingly getting involved, "it just feels dicier for news organizations to make the decision, because you don't want to be helping another country undermine our democracy," McBride said.

Finally, the Washington Post admits the existence of the Hunter Biden laptop -- but still strains to claim that the laptop may be fake, slapping the word "allegedly" on to the laptop's information.

News organizations have been tested since 2016. Wary of hacked materials since then, many proved reluctant to report on the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop out of concerns that they were the result of a hack. As the conservative press latched on to ,b>allegedly incriminating emails found on the computer in the final weeks of the 2020 campaign, more mainstream outlets did not join in a 2016-style frenzy over the material, and Facebook and Twitter limited distribution of a New York Post story about the laptop.

An analysis by The Post nearly two years later confirmed the authenticity of many of the emails on the laptop and found no evidence of a hack.

Now Trump, whose 2016 campaign was boosted by the Russian hack of Democratic emails and the ensuing press fervor over them, could be shielded by the media's evolving reluctance to use hacked documents.

"It would certainly be ironic if Trump, of all people, benefited from the media learning lessons from a situation he exploited," said Ben Smith, Semafor editor in chief. (He was the top editor of BuzzFeed News when it published the Steele dossier, a collection of memos alleging collusion between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign that contained unverified allegations.)

Of course.

It will also be ironic when Ben Smith is hacked and we all delight in his revealed correspondences.

The Washington Post claims they have no set policy on hacked materials -- leaving open the door to publishing them.

Of course, they had a very, very firm Hacked Materials Policy when it came to Hunter posting pictures of his crackpipe, whores, and meetings with foreign clients -- you know, "allegedly incriminating emails."

The Washington Post lays out how they'll launder the documents into the national discourse:

"They will eventually move down the food chain to find someone who will publish them," Tofel said. "And if they fail at that, the internet being what it is, they can just publish it themselves."

And if you don't hate the press enough -- and you don't; none of us do, none of us are capable of the proper level of loathing and disgust -- enjoy PBS' and AP's expose on Elon Musk misusing his platform.

Musk, you see, uses his platform to... "amplify" views from one side of the aisle.

Can you imagine? Can you even imagine such a thing?!

How Elon Musk uses his X social media platform to amplify right-wing views

They said as they ran their thirtieth piece on "Gender Euphoria."

As X's owner and most followed user, Elon Musk has increasingly used the social media platform as a microphone to amplify his political views and, lately, those of right-wing figures he's aligned with. There are few modern parallels to his antics, but then again there are few modern parallels to Elon Musk himself.

Of course, none of this should come as a surprise.

Back in 2022 when he was trying to buy Twitter, Musk said he was doing so because it wasn't living up to its potential as a "platform for free speech." Protecting free speech -- not money -- was his motivation because, as he put it, "having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization."

Musk often ruminates on the future of civilization. For one, he appears fixated on a coming " population collapse," threatening to wipe out humanity. And he joined prominent scientists and tech leaders last year in warning the world about artificial intelligence doing the same. Musk has framed threats to free speech as yet another existential crisis looming over the world. And he is going to try his best to save it.

"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," Musk said in an April 2022 post, adding hearts, stars and rocket emojis to highlight the statement.

Two years on, the platform -- now called X -- has indeed become a haven for the type of free speech Musk has come to champion. In the U.S., he's spread memes -- and sometimes misinformation -- about illegal immigration, alleged election fraud and transgender policies, and he formally endorsed former President Donald Trump's presidential bid this summer.

PBS and AP want you to know that Musk is quite unlike the other tech billionaires in using his platform to push a political ideology.

Musk's antics are unlike any other Big Tech leader, and while it may be off-putting to a segment of his X user base, it could also attract eyeballs to his platform. Could this all be part of a broader plan? After all, despite publicly criticizing Musk's antics, those on the left continue to use his platform.

"X has remained surprisingly resilient throughout the recent controversy," Enberg said. "That's in no small part due to consumer fascination with conspiracy theories and Elon Musk himself."

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 01:29 PM

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