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CNN Warns It May Expose An Anonymous Critic If He Ever Again Publishes Bad Content (theintercept.com)
New submitter evolutionary writes: CNN appears to be giving veiled threats at a Reddit user who posted critical comments about the media giant. After an apology was given by the Reddit user (possibly under fear upon discovering CNN had his identity), CNN stated: "CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change." The story stems around Trump's July 2nd tweet, which includes a video showing him wrestle and takedown someone with a photoshopped CNN logo on their head. The video was accompanied by the hashtags #FraudNewsCNN and #FNN. CNN reportedly tracked down the Reddit user who claimed credit for the tweet and announced they would not publicize the user's identity since they issued a lengthy public apology, promised not to repeat the behavior, and claimed status as a private citizen. However, as The Intercept reports, "the network explicitly threatened that it could change its mind about withholding the user's real name if this behavior changes in the future: 'CNN is not publishing HanA**holeSolo's name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same. CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.'"
The guy admitted to them he's a troll, and asked them not to publish his real name because of the potential negative impact his trolling would have on his real life. They said ok, but if you start trolling again we may not be willing to withhold your name.
What's the better option? What they did, or publish and be damned (with probably at least a bunch of harassment for the guy), or withhold the name but not tell him they might publish in future if he keeps it up? I think they chose a reasonable course.
When I read this article I was surprised at the tone and how they treated the troll. The attitude of the writer was, "Hey everyone! We finally caught a troll! He acts all big and bad online but once we got his name he was all scared and apologetic. Don't be a scared little troll, be good online or we will find you like we found this troll." I think the writer thought he was doing a public service, but in reality he was being a corporate despot. There are people in power who want to get rid of anonymity on the internet, and the fact is, if The Man really wants to know what you do online, The Man will find out. The thing is, this problem with Russian hacking and talk of fake news is giving The Man more reasons to get rid of anonymity online.
Shameless self promotion, I wrote a cyberpunk novel about this sort of thing called Girl in a Fishbowl
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
It's pretty straightforward. Trump tweets the third-party content. CNN sees the content and starts to investigate the source of that content -- just as any news outlet would. They find out that the source of the content was from a Reddit user. They see a ton of other disgusting content that the Reddit user also created. BOOM --
this is a real story... the president is tweeting content from a disgusting internet troll. CNN digs deeper and finds out the identity of the source of that content. The person's identity is very relevant to the story. The reporter contacts the person, tells them that they know who he is and what he did. The troll rightly freaks out, sends a letter of apology, and makes an impassioned plea that he won't do anything like this again if CNN won't publish his name. CNN agrees to conditionally respect that request.
I don't see the issue here, folks. News outlets do this every single day of the week and twice on Sundays. A big part of journalism is digging, finding the story, finding the hidden underbelly... and then deciding what to do with that information. Every news outlet has serious dirt on a lot of people that they don't release. Many times, those people ask the news outlets not reveal their identities. Sometimes the news outlet says yes. Sometimes the news outlet says no.
CNN is not going to release this guy's name -- although they certainly could have as it is pertinent to the story. But the bigger story here is that (yet again), the President does some completely moronic and non-presidential on Twitter.
If the idiotic photograph of the Trump beheading had blurred out Kathy Griffin's face... the news outlets would have (rightly) dug deep to expose who was in the photograph and who took the photograph. I'm sure they would have called her up saying, "We know who you are, we know what you did." I'm sure Kathy Griffin would also made an impassioned plea to that news outlet.
There are consequences in everything you do. If you act like a complete idiot... and it becomes newsworthy... then you'd better watch out. Because a world of hurt is coming down on you.
That thinking is part of the problem. They're a media outlet. They used to be respectable journalists. And taking offense at a harmless joke is beyond lunacy. The "picked sides" long before 'HanAssholeSolo' created that hilarious 'political cartoon' aka political gif
Think about what you're saying here though. You're saying that what the President of the United States says to the public is not only not worth reporting on, but that it lessens a news organization for doing so.
I think if you read my post again, you'll see that I said precisely the opposite.
What I said is that what the President of the United States says to the public is very much reporting on. What some Reddit troll who never had direct contact with the President does is not. And that by going after the Reddit troll, CNN managed to take the spotlight away from the Trump's behavior, distracting us from what really does matter with their own bad behavior.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Correct the video was what drew their attention however dude was a vile piece of shit advocating for violence against all kinds of groups and calling for shooting members of the media so i'm sure that's what pissed them off. Either way. His information was already public so it's not like they dug up private information anyway like Drudge and the like would have you believe. When you have your info public and go pushing for violence against people because of their color or group or whatever then fuck it.. you deserve what the fuck you get. The dude was an asshole.