Press reaction to Trump campaign email leak starkly different from 2016, when Clinton was hacked

When emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign were leaked just before the 2016 election, the news media breathlessly covered the October surprise as if they’d opened Al Capone’s vault and there was actually something in it.

The WikiLeaks dump provided journalists with a treasure trove of correspondence, from Clinton’s backroom thoughts on Syria and China to staffer complaints about the candidate’s “terrible instincts” to campaign chairman John Podesta’s risotto recipe.

Fast forward to this month when it was revealed the Trump campaign was hacked and its emails leaked to the press. There was no media feeding frenzy over the contents of the breach, no divining about how the stolen emails reflect upon the former president or his bid for reelection. Major press outlets instead sat on the story for weeks until Trump’s campaign spokesman broke news of the hack Saturday.

What a difference eight years make.

The New York Times, Politico and the Washington Post opted not to publish the emails, even after the hack was revealed to the public. It was ironic given that all three outlets — like most of the news media — pored over Clinton’s emails in 2016, unleashing a torrent of salacious content but few if any bombshells. So what changed?

It’s hard to know since the three news outlets in possession of the leaked material have not gone into detail about why they’ve abstained from publishing the emails, but they should explain their thinking. Hypocrisy is not a nice word.

Perhaps the silence on the Trump emails boils down to lessons learned. Journalistic publishing standards had to shift in the wake of the 2016 race, when Russia’s hacking and disinformation efforts played a role in the outcome of the election. The Clinton campaign’s emails were stolen by bad actors who sought to sway the election in favor of Trump, and covering the leaked material ad nauseam played right into the villain’s hands.

Clinton spent the last month of her campaign on the defense, answering to the contents of the leaked communications. The flurry of coverage put the campaign on its heels, and she was often treated more like a defendant than a candidate.

Now would be a good time for news organizations to reflect on what they did, or didn’t do, when Clinton ran against Trump. Simply admitting that the news media made mistakes back in 2016 would go a long way. The Washington Post circled the idea recently without totally going there.

“This episode probably reflects that news organizations aren’t going to snap at any hack that comes in and is marked as ‘exclusive’ or ‘inside dope’ and publish it for the sake of publishing,” said Matt Murray, executive editor of the Post, who was quoted in an article published by the outlet. “…All of the news organizations in this case took a deep breath and paused, and thought about who was likely to be leaking the documents, what the motives of the hacker might have been, and whether this was truly newsworthy or not.”

The New York Times told the Associated Press that it would not discuss why it chose not to publish details of the leak, but the paper appeared to indirectly defend its decision in a broader piece about the nature of the breach. “The documents sent to Politico, as it described them, and to The Times included research about and assessments of potential vice-presidential nominees, including Senator JD Vance, whom Mr. Trump ultimately selected,” the Times wrote. “Like many such vetting documents, they contained past statements with the potential to be embarrassing or damaging, such as Mr. Vance’s remarks casting aspersions on Mr. Trump.”

Vice presidential candidate JD Vance during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

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Politico covered the mechanics of the Trump campaign leak rather than the contents of the hacked emails. The messages and documents were sent on an AOL account from an anonymous figure who referred to themselves as “Robert.” Politico spokesperson Brad Dayspring said editors weighed “the questions surrounding the origins of the documents and how they came to our attention were more newsworthy than the material that was in those documents.”

That’s quite a contrast to 2016, when there was no bar too low regarding coverage of the Democratic campaign leak. A list of Clinton’s most revealing emails published by Politico was once such example of voyeurism passing for news. Entry number five of eight was titled, “Joking about the Benghazi hearing”:

On Oct. 24, 2015, the Clinton team debated how sharp of a dig Clinton should take at Rep. Trey Gowdy after her marathon appearance before his committee investigating the Benghazi attack. As they discussed remarks she was set to deliver at the October Jefferson Jackson dinner the next night, Podesta had an idea for a joke. “I used to be obsessed with Donald Trump’s hair, that was until I got to spend 11 hours staring at the top of Trey Gowdy’s head,” Podesta suggested inserting into the speech.”

“I love the joke too but I think HRC should stay above the committee — and especially above personal insults about it. She’s got every inch of the high ground right now,” Jake Sullivan replied.

“Wow. You people are a bunch of ninnies,” joked Clinton comms director Jennifer Palmieri.

Not exactly a stop-the-presses, newsworthy bombshell, but Politico published it all the same.

Vice President Kamala Harris and President Biden.

“Seriously the double standard here is incredible,” posted Neera Tanden, a top White House official with the Biden administration who was an advisor to the Clinton campaign. “For all the yapping on interviews, it would be great for people making these decisions to be accountable to the public. Do they now admit they were wrong in 2016 or is the rule hacked materials are only used when it hurts Dems? There’s no in between.”

When another X user pointed out that the hacked Clinton campaign material was dumped into the public domain by WikiLeaks, and that’s what led to some bad decisions by the press, Tanden replied: “The manner of the hacking made them cover a Russian psyop? That is not a justification. That’s a rationalization.”

According to Politico, emails from “Robert” began arriving July 22. The contents appeared to include internal communications from senior Trump officials. Reporters confirmed with the Republican campaign that the leaked emails were authentic. The mysterious sender also noted that there was more material to come, including “legal and court documents to internal campaign discussions.”

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung reminded the press of their duty to fairness and democracy. “Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want.”

But Trump sang a different tune in July 2016, when during a news conference the presidential hopeful directly appealed to Russia to hack Clinton’s emails. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said, referring to emails she’d deleted from a private account she had used when she was secretary of State. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

That same day, Russians made their first attempt to break into the servers used by Clinton’s personal office. From there, the hacked emails were released by WikiLeaks in dribs and drabs. And by October, Trump was complaining that the leaks were not getting enough coverage from reporters. “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks,” he posted on Twitter.

The FBI is now investigating claims that Iran is behind the Trump campaign breach, and looking into attempted hacks of Biden-Harris campaign servers.

Ethical standards are a fine reason not to publish dubiously obtained material. So is the determination that the content isn’t newsworthy. Neither of those approaches is the problem here. The issue is around the media’s absence of self-examination about its actions in 2016, and its lack of candid discussion around whether Clinton deserved similar caution.