Late last week, the Washington Post endured an attempted hacking effort, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. While not a systems-targeted attempt, it was instead an attempt to breach the email accounts of a number of reporters. This has all the earmarks of a concerted effort by a national team of hackers, and the indicators seem rather clear which country was behind this attempt.
Just don’t expect a gun-shy CNN to point out the likely villains.
The Journal broke the story, detailing that this was a specific hacking aimed at reporters’ email accounts, and this is where all of the indicators of culpability are to be found. “The breach, which affected Microsoft email accounts, potentially gave the intruders access to the contents of reporters’ work emails, including messages sent and received.”
It is with a measure of authority that The Journal can tip a finger in the direction of the Chi-Coms, as their outlet was similarly targeted a few years ago. In that case the outlet saw its Chinese correspondents had been uniformly targeted with the hacking attempt, and this was also seen to be the case at the Washington Post this month. “The reporters targeted include members of the Post’s national security and economic policy teams who cover China.”
So an outlet with empirical knowledge of these cyberattacks from China detailed that WaPo experienced a mirror image attack, not holding back on the party involved. Yet at CNN, they tellingly covered this same story but could be seen hedging from calling out the villainous country, in a possible sign of appeasing the Chi-Coms.
In its report on the hacking mission, CNN would not directly cite China as a culprit, despite coming into possession of an internal WaPo memo concerning this matter. It seems clear that the outlet wanted to walk right up to the line of nodding their head at who is to blame, all while retaining plausible deniability that it called out the Chi-Coms.
It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the hack. Journalists are regular targets for both state-backed spies, who are interested in tracking their reporting before it becomes public. A spokesperson for The Post declined to comment when asked who might be responsible for the hack.
The outlet held back on this detail even as it alluded to the hacking effort performed on the Wall Street Journal, citing that it may have been the work of “suspected Chinese hackers.” So even with that citation in place, and the Journal attesting what nation was likely behind its own violation, CNN could not actually raise a finger.
Of course, this is all speculation as to why they might be pulling punches in this fashion, but given the erosion of its audience over the years and the network on the verge of being spun off by parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, this could likely cause the editorial team to pull punches out of a fear of reprisals. If the CCP were to expel the cable channel’s Beijing bureau, it would be another hit to the fortunes of the longstanding news outlet.
It now appears entirely possible that this is another instance of the network holding back for outside interests. In a fashion similar to the Jake Tapper book detailing how Joe Biden had not been properly reported on for years, China just may be another subject that cannot be addressed directly.
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie.
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