Professor Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin, called such an approach “ironic” given that Trump openly asked Russia to hack Mrs Clinton’s emails in 2016.
“Russia, if you’re listening … I think you’ll probably be handsomely rewarded by our press,” Trump said at the time.
Professor Culver said the press’s reticence in 2024 showed that lessons had been learned from the “almost breathless coverage” of the leaked emails in 2016.
“I think some reporters are concerned that too much has been learned from the testimony in this case and that the three media outlets are a bit too conservative,” she added.
Prof. Culver acknowledged that news organizations should be cautious about such hacking attacks because they do not know how the documents were obtained or what the motive was.
However, she said she believes the leaked material would have been released if it had revealed something more “newsworthy,” such as an email to the former president’s campaign from Thomas Crooks, who was shot while attempting to assassinate Trump.
Matt Murray, editor in chief of the Washington Post, told his newspaper that the material was ultimately not “fresh or new enough” to publish.
Politico, meanwhile, stated: “The questions about the origin of the documents and how we came to know about them were more newsworthy than the content of those documents themselves.”
Scott J. Shapiro, a professor of law and philosophy at Yale Law School who has written books on hacking, said the organization’s decision was likely influenced by a desire “not to encourage or contribute to foreign interference in national elections.”
He added that there was a “feeling of not wanting to be attacked by the right as a puppet of the Democrats.”
Professor Shapiro said one problem is that political campaigns are inherently difficult to secure, making them an easy target for hackers.
“The incentive is high and the difficulty is low. Campaigns form very quickly and then dissolve. And the people who join them have lives, and that’s why it’s very, very difficult to contain them,” he said.
