Roy Greenslade: Critics of Sony computer-hacking coverage have really lost the plot

Surely Sony Pictures was not being serious when it cautioned the media not to report on the revelations that emerged from the hacking of its internal computer?

Similarly, was writer Aaron Sorkin — whose work I have long admired — joking when he wrote a New York Times piece decrying the media’s use of the material which did not have a public interest value? In both cases, I’m afraid, they were being serious. It is sad to witness one of the world’s largest media corporations and one of the world’s leading screenwriters misconstruing the nature of modern media. Even worse, they have advanced arguments for their belief in censorship that just do not bear scrutiny.

Let’s deal first with Sony’s plea to several US-based news outlets, which included the New York Times and the Hollywood Reporter. It stated said it did not “consent to your possession... dissemination, publication... or making any use of the stolen information”.

Of course it didn’t consent, and I can well understand the company’s obvious embarrassment, and doubtless rage, at the illegal hacking of movie script details, salary data and private emails. But Sony’s complaint about the resulting media coverage appears to be based on the notion that the publisher of the material is a sort of fence, a criminal who acts as a middleman to benefit by the sale of stolen property. This is a false comparison. Information that has been leaked online cannot, and should not, be ignored by news outlets. Editors would have looked foolish to pretend matter in the public domain didn’t exist.

Did anyone really believe it would be possible for journalists — and the people they serve — to avert their gaze from emails involving celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, Leonardo DiCaprio and George Clooney? Editors are not endorsing the actions of the hackers by reproducing the leaks. They are in the business of disclosure.

Even if we agree that a New York Times spokeswoman was somewhat pompous in saying that its coverage would “take into account both the significance of the news and the questions of how the information emerged”, it is a reasonable point. It is indeed important to see this in the context of the nature of the material itself, and that’s where Sorkin enters the debate by accusing news outlets of being “morally treasonous and spectacularly dishonourable”.