Arguments for publishing the hacked Trump documents

JOURNALISM CAN BE COMPLICATED. But it has a simple guiding principle: report stories that are true and newsworthy.

There is a reason why “All the news worth printing” is the New York TimesThe motto. But the publication runs the risk of not living up to this principle if it continues to sit on what a collection of hacked internal documents from Donald Trump's campaign team. Washington Post And Politico They reportedly received the same documents – and like the JustThey have not published it yet either.

It is possible that each of these media outlets will eventually publish the hacked material, which reportedly includes a 271-page file compiled as Trump was considering a vice president, assessing both the strengths and “POTENTIAL VULNERABILITY” of Ohio Senator JD Vance. It may be that the JustThe postAnd Politico everyone is working to ensure that no erroneous material has been deliberately inserted. But that is not the explanation they have given so far for their hesitation.

And if they ultimately decide not to publish the material, that would obviously be a mistake. It would violate long-standing journalistic principles and fuel conspiracy theories about pro-Trump media bias. And it is in blatant contradiction to past practice.

In 2016, all three outlets were among those that published information hacked by Russian agents about Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. The circumstances were not exactly the same – in that case, a third party, WikiLeaks, released the stolen documents and positioned the Clinton-damaging releases to fit into news cycles unfavorable to Trump. At the time, Trump cheered the release of those internal emails.

This time Trump's campaign says It was a website hacked by a foreign entity – the alleged perpetrator is Iran – and those posting the information “are following the orders of America's enemies and doing exactly what they want.”

But that is not the most important consideration that the media should make when deciding whether to publish the material. Their considerations should be much narrower: Can the information be verified and is it news?

And the hacked material appears to be both.

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THIS IS WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE ORIGIN AND CONTENT OF THE NEW HACK: Politicothe first reported In the July 22 incident, a person with an AOL account calling himself “Robert” emailed a reporter what appeared to be internal Trump campaign communications. “Robert” sent the Feb. 23 Vance dossier, which included publicly available information about Vance's background and past statements. And “Robert” emailed a partial document about Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who was also being considered as Trump's running mate.

The hacker also said Politico He had a “large number of documents from [Trump’s] Legal and court documents to internal campaign discussions.” But when asked how he came into possession of the documents, “Robert” said, “I suggest you don't ask where I got them. Any answer to that question would compromise me and legally prevent you from publishing them.” (The last part is not true: There is no legal prohibition on a publication publishing material obtained through illegal hacking, as long as the publication was not responsible for the hacking in any way.)

In a written statement last Saturday, August 10, the Trump campaign said it had been hacked and blamed Iran, citing a Microsoft attack on August 8. alarm about this country's efforts to hack a presidential campaign. The FBI is investigating.

The statement also denied the press access to the documents, saying that their publication would “cause chaos in our Democratic [sic] process.” The Trump team did not deny the authenticity of the documents. In fact, Politico reported that “two people familiar with the documents” confirmed that they were “authentic.”

Despite it Politico and the Washington Post have issued statements suggesting that the information was not “newsworthy” enough to print – at least for now. Each statement left open the possibility that the publication could write in more detail about the content of the hacked information it received. The New York Times does not comment.

This is astonishing. What a campaign team thinks about its own vice presidential candidate is newsworthy in itself.

Consider this: Did the dossier list Vance's remark about “childless cat ladies,” which prompted widespread media coverage after his election, as a weak link? Whether the answer is yes or no, the dossier provides a revealing insight into the thinking and workings of the campaign team.

More broadly, the file would give us clear insights into what the Trump campaign considers to be policy weaknesses and ideological taboos in the modern campaign climate. Thanks to recent reporting on old Vance positions and statements, we could also see things that Trump's vetting team may have missed — again, an example of the operation's mindset.

Stories like this were once the bread and butter of politically obsessed media. In January 2012 Buzzfeed published the research documents that John McCain's 2008 campaign team had compiled about his then primary opponent Mitt Romney. Buzzfeed had not obtained the material through a hacker attack. But strictly speaking, as far as the message was concerned, many commentators saw value in her decision. Buzzfeed Furthermore, what is more controversial, he printed the subsequently discredited Steele dossier. This was done on the grounds that it was indisputably in the public interest to know what material about Trump was circulating before his election.

The authenticated Vance files exceed the bar set by those stories of the past. The idea that there is nothing “newsworthy” at all in 271 pages of internal campaign documents is mind-boggling.

THE SALES POINTS CURRENTLY IN POSSESSION OF THE Vance Dossier have found themselves in such a situation before.

In 2016 Politico obtained hacked, internal opposition research on Florida Democratic congressional candidates compiled by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Politico decided to Story to give readers an insight into the party's views on its own candidates.

I am very familiar with this story, as I was one of the co-authors. Publishing the story was not an easy decision. Nor were the editorial debates about what to do with the Vance dossier. Media outlets do not want to reward the hacking of political campaigns with publicity, nor do they want to support the efforts of a hostile foreign government to rig the U.S. election. There is also a partisan dimension. Whichever campaign is hacked will accuse the reporter and the media outlet of being a tool of foreign agents and their political opponents.

But reporters are not here to worry about partisan critics or self-righteous media professors. This is not a job to win friends, to act as an extension of campaigns or as agents of a government. We report news. In 2020, when 60 minutes to put together a story that attacked PoliticoWhen I told them that the standard was simple because the Florida DCCC story four years earlier was based on hacked material, I told them that the standard was simple: “It has to be true. And it has to be newsworthy.”

60 minutes Correspondent Bill Whitaker asked if it was fair to use the hacked DCCC documents. “Life is unfair,” I replied. “And politics is unfair. My job is not to sit there and decide, 'This is fair and this is not.' My job is to report the news. And wherever the news leads, we follow it.”

I would say the same today. The job is to report the news. And the Vance dossier sounds like damn news.

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SINCE THE 2016 CAMPAIGN, there have been other cases where news organizations have had to make difficult decisions about whether to publish material obtained through controversial means – most notably the stories in the run-up to the 2020 election about the discovery of Hunter Biden’s laptop, which he had left at a computer repair shop. I was still at Politico then. And the editors ordered that the story be treated with such caution that we wrote almost nothing except that the laptop was a trademark of “Russian disinformation.”

The laptop was real. And looking back, this incident showed that the journalists had learned their lessons from four years ago.

Some observers wonder why the New York Times, Washington PostAnd Politico have not released the hacked Trump documents, the media's blatant inconsistency over the years is a cause for frustration. New York Times The reporting on Clinton’s emails was particularly highlighted.

“Media outlets like the New York Times owe their readers frenetic coverage of his campaign's emails or a mea culpa for their earth-shattering fixation on email in 2016,” said Brian Beutler. wrote Tuesday in his Off message substack.

Beutler is right. Perhaps the editors of the three media outlets have a good reason not to publish articles about the Vance documents. I am not privy to their conversations in the editorial office and I have great respect for the reporters of all these media outlets. Perhaps there are doubts about the authenticity of parts of the documents. Perhaps these media outlets have formulated stricter guidelines for the use of hacked materials after 2016.

Or maybe they're working on important stories related to the documents. Maybe they're gathering material to publish with the documents to put them in the broadest possible context.

But be that as it may, they should make their views known. If the New York Times, Politicoand the Washington Post have decided that there are certain considerations which prevent them from publishing this authentic and newsworthy information, then the least they could do would be to explain to the public what those considerations are.

It is important to introduce clearer standards because it is easy to see that this happens again and again.

When Whitaker asked me in 2020 if something like this could happen again, perhaps during this election, I didn't hesitate.

“Oh yes,” I replied. “It could definitely happen again.”

Well, here we are.