This is making the rounds on social media today, for good reason. It’s supposed to be a “news report” but there’s no news value in it. It’s a straight-up doxxing of a civil servant who’s guilty of nothing except having committed a thoughtcrime by donating pocket change to a cause the news outlet considers “controversial.”

Everything about it is bad. The paramedic’s donation only became public because the site to which he donated was hacked. The hacked information was then published by the Guardian in a story about cops and other “public officials” donating to Rittenhouse. There are situations in which the public’s interest in hacked information outweighs the privacy interest of the person who was hacked but that bar is high and this sure doesn’t clear it.

Even the paramedic’s employer, asked for comment, couldn’t muster the performative outrage that’s typically shown in situations like this in order to appease the media.

Ten bucks to Rittenhouse’s defense fund. For nothing more than that, this guy’s name is on local television in a segment that includes images of his home just so that the intrepid reporter can get a shot of himself ringing the doorbell. I haven’t seen a random person ruined so gratuitously by a media outlet for badthink than that infamous WaPo story last year about some rando wearing blackface at a Halloween party.

Watch it and see if I’m exaggerating. The news station wanted to put a bullseye on the paramedic’s back by letting Rittenhouse’s local critics know there’s a sympathizer in their midst, nothing more or less. They might as well have titled the segment “Sleep With One Eye Open.” Which, I suppose, is the actual “public interest” served in the minds of the people responsible for the report. They just put viewers on notice that if they donate to Rittenhouse, they might open the door one day to find a reporter on their doorstep too.