There seems to be a very disturbing trend among mega sites like The Verge, Gawker (surprised?), and others where every information that’s revealed from the Sony Pictures hack is turned into a full blown, multi-thousand word article. As you likely know by now, Sony Pictures was hacked over two weeks ago by what’s likely a state sponsored attack by North Korea. While the reasoning behind it is unclear, many believe that it’s due to Sony Pictures upcoming comedy The Interview in which Seth Rogan and James Franco attempt to assassinate the country’s leader.

While there have been some interesting tidbits like Sony attempting to work with Marvel in order to bring Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe alongside Captain America and the gang, there has also been no shortage of articles covering private email exchanges between Sony staff members and executives. Instead of treating Sony Pictures as the victim of this attack where hackers illegally stole all this information, sites are now doing the dirty work by revealing every piece of information they can get their hands on and furthering their agenda. It should be made clear that there is a clear difference between journalists uncovering information and simply releasing private emails between Sony employees and spinning a story around them. Furthermore, with each new article covering some private exchange, sites are basically putting a price on our privacy.

Lets me explain after the jump.

For the remainder of this article, I’m going to use The Verge for simplicity’s sake, but what I’m writing applies to any and all sites who are covering the leak blow by blow and posting private information. In consumer’s and journalist’s minds, for some reason, Facebook has become the poster child of a company with an ulterior motive. Every time Facebook updates its terms of service, everybody freaks out and The Verge pumps out some long editorial about how we need to keep our social network sites and personal data locked down. They urge the importance of privacy in the digital age and rally against any government sanctioned program where data is collected. Forget the fact that many other companies like Google do the same exact thing (if not more), and that these services like Facebook are free and can be opted out of at anytime. Heck, let’s even assume that The Verge has our best interest in mind and that they truly care about our privacy and personal information, two things which I highly value.

If that’s truly their stance, then the hypocrisy of their articles outlining and posting screenshots of direct email exchanges from the Sony Pictures hack is beyond appalling by this point. As I stated before, the information that’s being revealed are mainly private emails and notes between Sony Pictures employees, ranging from aids, to producers and top executives like co-chairman Amy Pascal. Yes the emails might be strong toned, there might be name calling, and other non-flattery things but that’s business. What’s happening behind the closed doors at Sony Pictures is no different than what’s taking placing at WB, Universal, etc. In fact, this isn’t even unique to the film industry. Business is and will always be a nasty thing behind the scenes. You think when hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars are at risk, that everybody sits around politely and discusses things? Now multiply that ante with people who are passionate about their trade and you get the exchanges posted.

And that’s where the frustration comes from when The Verge runs with these types of articles. How would any of their staff members feel if their personal exchanges, be it emails or texts were revealed? How would they feel if their private photos and videos were released online for millions to casually browse through? Much like how they feel when Facebook changes their TOS, they’d likely freak out and implore that we need to safeguard our privacy. The only difference now is that it’s not their privacy at stake. Never mind the fact that with each article they run, not only do they further the agenda of the hackers, but also put people’s livelihood in jeopardy.

That’s because beyond negative publicity, there are real world repercussions for this incident. Besides the cost of Sony cleaning up this mess, all future projects and working relationships at Sony Pictures are at risk. If the studio suffers from this, guess what happens? Layoffs! If you’re the poor person caught in between an email exchange and your name makes it out there, you’re forever immortalized on the net which can potentially make your life not only more difficult, but affect your future job prospects. Be it Amy Pascal or anyone else at Sony Pictures, they have car payments, mortgages, and bills like the rest of us continuing to spread these stories can and does have real world implications that goes beyond just some egg on their face.

If The Verge truly cared about privacy or if we care about our own privacy, we must first respect that of others. If we’re unwilling to take the privacy of others seriously, how can others take ours seriously? While revealing that Sony Pictures was attempting to work out a deal with Marvel is one thing, posting private exchanges makes you no better than the hackers. After all, it’s not as if some scandal has taken place and this is leaked information that proves the incident one way or another. Instead, Sony Pictures was hacked by likely foreign nationals and The Verge is doing the group’s dirty work.

With each new article by The Verge that reveals some new exchange that took place at Sony Pictures, they’re basically making the case that privacy doesn’t really matter (unless it’s their own) as long as they get a few extra clicks and eyeballs on their site. Even worse, The Verge and others are acting like virtual paparazzi and putting a price tag on privacy, betting that we’ll click on those articles while hiding behind the shield of journalism.

While I’m happy to continue coverage on this incident (and we’ve ran our fair share of articles on the matter like the five movies which were leaked to file-sharing sites) I will not do at the expense of other people’s privacy, no matter how juicy the headline is.

Discuss:

Do you think it’s wrong to be posting the private exchanges between different Sony Pictures execs?