Ranting On...the Sony Hack

Angelina Jolie and Amy Pascal, two Hollywood titans at the
center of the Sony email leaks

(I couldn't pick between this and the Bill Cosby topic for this week's Friday rant, so I decided to double down and do rants for Saturday instead) If you're someone who follows Hollywood news at all, there hasn't been a story as big and juicy as the Sony hacks all year.  The release of private emails, as well as budget problems and internal feuds regarding certain films, has been a bonanza for the tabloid business.  With movie star names like Angelina Jolie, Adam Sandler, and Bill Murray getting dragged through the mud, you can hardly blame the press for jumping all over this-it's a cornucopia of gossip.  However, the recent comments from Judd Apatow, stating that reading and publishing these emails is the same thing as releasing Jennifer Lawrence's nude photos, and why is the mainstream press doing it, got me thinking-is he right?  Is it morally wrong to read these emails?

I should admit, straight off, that I've read snippets of most of these emails.  I headed into the articles and have read all of the things that Scott Rudin and Amy Pascal have said about various celebrities and one another.  If nothing else, the internal workings of Hollywood itself utterly fascinate me.  It's bizarre to see how studios handle competing projects with similar subjects or try to work around the crazy busy schedules of the biggest movie stars.  So even if I end up deciding that this was "the wrong thing to do" there's really no shutting Pandora's Box.

The first thing I think we should all realize is that the Sony hackings are dangerous, and criminal.  The people who actually did the hackings, potentially a terrorist organization, potentially associated with North Korea in reaction to The Interview, the new James Franco/Seth Rogen film about Kim Jung-Un, set a dangerous precedent, and in particular the release of the social security numbers and bank account numbers of different Sony employees is unforgivable.  In many ways, this aspect of the story mirrors that information that was released during the celebrity phone hackings a few months ago.  There's nothing journalistic about knowing someone's social security number, just as there's nothing journalistic about someone's naked photos.  If this were the only aspect of this story, everyone would be in agreement with Apatow.

The other aspect of this story, while morally complicated, is a bit fuzzy in terms of journalistic ethics.  The reality is that the content of those emails is in fact news.  What studio executives have planned for upcoming movies, how much over-budget something like Spectre is currently and the internal discussions of major Hollywood players counts as entertainment news, at least.  The question here isn't whether or not it was legal to access these emails (it wasn't) but whether it is correct to cover the contents of them.  Apatow's rage seems to be in part based on simply that these private emails were released to the public-not necessarily based on the fact that they were a form of cyber-terrorism.  So let's say that a news organization like the New York Times got a hold of these emails somehow-would we be using the same line of argument?  I feel like Apatow and many in Hollywood would, but I also think that the public would be less sympathetic since the way that the information came across was through a reputable journalistic source (don't believe this to be true?  Just look at Richard Nixon).

So while I can totally get behind what Apatow is saying and we ALL have emails, texts, phone conversations, photos, and information that we would be mortified if they were released, I'm not 100% behind these two things being the same thing.  The way that the information was released was absolutely criminal, but I don't think that it violates a journalist's credentials to cover and print the contents of these letters provided they aren't something that has no journalistic ethos like a SSN or a bank account number.  Almost all of these letters had something to do with film production or professional attitudes between famous colleagues.  I think we'd be in a grayer area if we were publishing amorous letters between two people or fights between family or marital couples.  With the exception of maybe the Aaron Sorkin story, none of these articles would fall into that camp, and so I think they're fair game, though I definitely see Mr. Apatow's point, and do think that those that actually did the hacking should be brought to justice.

This is a really morally grey area-anyone want to take a stab at their own thoughts regarding the topic?  Share your thoughts in the comments!