The DNC Hack Is Watergate, but Worse; Slate, 7/26/16

Franklin Foer, Slate; The DNC Hack Is Watergate, but Worse:

"What’s galling about the WikiLeaks dump is the way in which the organization has blurred the distinction between leaks and hacks. Leaks are an important tool of journalism and accountability. When an insider uncovers malfeasance, he brings information to the public in order to stop the wrongdoing. That’s not what happened here. The better analogy for these hacks is Watergate. To help win an election, the Russians broke into the virtual headquarters of the Democratic Party. The hackers installed the cyber-version of the bugging equipment that Nixon’s goons used—sitting on the DNC computers for a year, eavesdropping on everything, collecting as many scraps as possible. This is trespassing, it’s thievery, it’s a breathtaking transgression of privacy. It falls into that classic genre, the dirty trick. Yet that term feels too innocent to describe the offense. Nixon’s dirty tricksters didn’t mindlessly expose the private data of low-level staff."

[Podcast] Poisoning the Press; NPR's On the Media, 10/1/10

[Podcast] NPR's On the Media; Poisoning the Press:

"Jack Anderson was an investigative reporter whose syndicated newspaper column – "Washington Merry-Go-Round" – outed countless political scandals beginning in the 1950s. Only Anderson did what he had to to get the story, ethical or not, legal or not. George Washington University professor Mark Feldstein, talks about his new book, Poisoning the Press."

http://onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/10/01/07