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Reporting on Sony hack has some blaming media as enabling crime

An epic leak of top-secret info. Unguarded e-mails by power-brokers revealed. Secret new projects exposed in detail. Today, our Eye on The Media considers news-gathered through crime as opposed to news gathered through leaks. Is there a difference?...
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An epic leak of top-secret info. Unguarded e-mails by power-brokers revealed. Secret new projects exposed in detail. Today, our Eye on The Media considers news-gathered through crime as opposed to news gathered through leaks. Is there a difference?


This is one story that has it all.... A-list movie stars, mysterious villains, and enough twists and turns to make ninety-minutes fly by. But it's all hitting a little too close to home for Hollywood, and for Sony Pictures in particular.

Over the past month, internal e-mails from Sony's servers have been finding their way onto the internet's front pages. The company has been hacked by a shadowy group calling itself the Guardians of Peace.

And there has been widespread speculation that the Guardians of Peace are associated with the state of North Korea because they both share one demand: Both the hackers and North Korea want Sony to halt the release of a zany buddy movie called "The Interview." It stars James Franco and Seth Rogen, characters dispathed to North Korea by the C.I.A. to assassinate leader Kim Jong-Un. The Guardians of Peace, it seems, don't do "zany."

The details are embarrassing, and multiple: Sony's chair Amy Pascal is caught calling Leonardo DiCaprio "despicable" in one e-mail; making racist comments about President Obama's taste in movies in another; and calling television, quote -- "the new black baby" -- later on.

Together the Sony e-mails reveal an ugly, often insecure side of Tinsel Town... which is perhaps not shocking in itself, but they've nevertheless driven a whole lot of news.

Media outlets have run with the juicy gossip in the leaked emails... running story after story about actors' prima donna behaviour, salaries of the stars and execs, and even pay gaps between men and women on the Sony payroll.

It seems it's all too much for the media to resist. But, should they? After all, this is all information obtained in a very illegal hack. That's a question we're asking today as part of our occasional series Eye on the Media.

  • Emily Yoshida is entertainment editor at the online technology, business and entertainment magazine The Verge.

  • Evan Selinger is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

  • Shinan Govani is an author, and social columnist for Hello! Magazine.


What do you think? Is releasing this information and these emails in the public interest? Or should the media resist publishing information that was gained through illegal hacking.

Tweet us @thecurrentcbc. Or e-mail us through our website. Find us on Facebook. Call us toll-free at 1 877 287 7366. And as always if you missed anything on The Current, grab a podcast.

This segment was produced by The Current's Sarah Grant, Sujata Berry and Lara O'Brien.

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