By now, chances are you've heard of the big Sony debacle – the major hack and all those leaked emails – and witnessed its fallout. Let's just say it's been far from the greatest month for the studio.
At this point, you can visit practically any entertainment-themed news outlet (and many mainstream ones) and read from a treasure trove of jacked emails, many of which reveal either top-secret details about popular franchises or extremely embarrassing details about Hollywood big-shots. and in some cases, you could find a lot of both. In a series of emails about the upcoming Steve Jobs movie that Aaron Sorkin wrote, for example, there's the following musing about Angelina Jolie from mega-producer Scott Rudin: "I'm not destroying my career over a minimally talented spoiled brat."
Apparently, throwing shade like this is simply par for the course with the Hollywood elite, a group that's even less likeable than you'd expect. And it seems that, over email at least, no target is off limits for these folks, as evidenced by leaked emails from Sony co-chair Amy Pascal revealing borderline racist comments about President Obama.
For the general reader, the Sony leaks have provided a privileged look into the inner workings of a truly ruthless business. We now know that top Sony execs are as caddy and vindictive as a middle school clique, and that the making of movies isn't nearly as magical as we once dreamed. But now that all this breached data is out there in the open, a new question arises: Is it ethical for us to be looking at it?
The Ethics Of Disseminating Stolen Data
According to Aaron Sorkin, the news outlets reporting on the stolen Sony emails are ultimately no better than Guardians of Peace, the hacking group that has taken credit for the malicious incursion.
"If you close your eyes you can imagine the hackers sitting in a room, combing through the documents to find the ones that will draw the most blood," Sorkin stated in an editorial for The New York Times. "And in a room next door are American journalists doing the same thing."
As Sorkin himself points out, he's hardly an impartial third party when it comes to commenting on the Sony attack: Many of the leaked emails center around the production of "Jobs," a script he authored. And comments made by Sorkin about others in Hollywood are among the embarrassing tidbits to surface. Nevertheless, Sorkin's question is definitely worth considering: Is the journalist who prints jacked data as much a hack as the hacker?
Gawker has been one of the websites leading the charge in publishing the Sony emails, and it's hardly a pillar of journalistic ethics. Do the Sony leaks and the eager involvement of the press point to the loss of respectable journalism in favor of the headline-grabbing unscrupulousness of Gawker?
Perhaps, but there's also a counter argument to Sorkin's that is worth considering – namely, the idea that the press must serve as a conduit for transparency and a tool to give readers as much information as they deserve Perhaps the most visible recent example of this is the Edward Snowden NSA leaks, which only got the level of attention they did thanks to Snowden getting two prominent publications – The Washington Post and The Guardian – involved. As controversial as the Snowden leaks were – and continue to be – there's no denying the way in which articles about them allowed the public to be informed about the extent of national surveillance.
Now granted, emails about how Leonardo DiCaprio jumped ship on "Jobs" hardly have the journalistic urgency of illicit surveillance efforts, but where does one draw the line about what should and shouldn't be released?
