About that time, “Guardians of Peace” began releasing inter-Sony emails obtained via their malware. You’d think that after the hackers started issuing chilling threats to physically harm Sony employees that the media would be chary about helping them execute an extortion plot. You’d be wrong.
Instead, news outlets began breathlessly reporting everything from the aliases of movie stars and the salaries of Sony employees to snarky internal comments about Adam Sandler and Angelina Jolie—and an email thread in which Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal joked tastelessly to producer Scott Rudin about President Obama’s supposed taste in movies.
Gossip über alles!
It was the rare news outlet that acknowledged it was essentially aiding North Korea in carrying out a conspiracy to blackmail an American company into forgoing its First Amendment rights.
The Associated Press and other mainstream organizations called these revelations “leaks,” which hardly conveys the reality of a military dictatorship stealing a U.S. company’s communications and demanding that it cease its activities.
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