Welcome to another episode of Strictly Business, the podcast in which we speak with some of the brightest minds working in the media business today. I'm Andrew Wallenstein with Variety. Exactly ten years ago today, I published a commentary defending the decision to publish the contents of the Sony Hack in Variety, the publication where I then served as co
editor in chief. And so in this episode of the Strictly Business podcast, with the distance of a decade's worth of perspective, I'm going to revisit a decision that, if I'm being candid, leaves me with some regret more in just a moment. Do you know seven to ten consumers crave more authentic, culturally diverse stories in media. That's just one of the insights Amazon Ads uncovered, and it's from
Ads to Zeitgeist Research. The study, which surveyed over twenty one thousand respondents across twelve countries, identifies three key trends, including the shift towards a more globally integrated culture, the rise of interactive and collaborative content creation, and consumers desire for more distinctive voices and original content. Visit Advertising dot Amazon dot com, slash culture Trends. To view the full report and learn how your brands can connect with audiences
by participating in today's cultural conversations. Welcome back to strictly business. I've encountered some sticky wickets over the course of my thirty plus year career, but I have to say that decision to publish the contents of the Sony hack, well, that may have been the stickiest. I'm not going to say if I had to do it all over again, I would do it differently because I understand why I did what I did then. But looking back on the hack in hindsight, I wish I'd taken a different tack,
and today I'll explain why in detail. By now, the basics are a well known chapter in relatively recent Hollywood history. On November twenty fourth, twenty fourteen, a group of hackers based in North Korea, calling themselves Guardians of Peace, began what you might call a virtual terror campaign against Sony Pictures an objection to the movie The Interview and its depiction of their leader, Kim Jong un. Mister rapport, I'm an agent Lacy with Central Intelligence.
You too, are going to be in a room alone with Kim.
We got the interview. The CIA would love it if you could take him out, Take him out, like for drinks, like to dinner, out of the town.
No, take him out.
Do you want us to kill the leader of North Korea?
Yes.
As part of that campaign, they stole and leaked mountains of private information of all sorts from Sony, including highly sensitive emails from its executives concerning their business. Variety was one of many press outlets around the world that published some of the information that emerged from emails and other materials unearthed by the hack.
Well, I was not.
Alone in making that decision. It was a controversial one. When I think a lot about to this day, I'd say it's even fair to say it has haunted me these years. I can remember representatives of the studio begging us not to publish, citing the damage being done to their employees and business associates whose privacy was being invaded. I think they felt particularly betrayed that a publication like Variety, which has been such an integral institution and the entertainment
industry for so long, would stoop so low. And though I felt I had solid logical ground on which I was able to make my decision to publish the Hacks disclosures. I admitted in the opening words of my article defending that decision that I did not feel good about it. Quote. The more sony pictures data keeps leaking, the more my moral compass spins like a weather van in a hurricane.
What just a week ago seemed such a clear cut case of doing what my instincts have told me to do at every other moment of my career is now making me increasingly queasy. End quote. You know, I still recall that feeling, that bitterness in my gut that people get whenever they have to make any decision that doesn't feel right, even though you know it's not wrong. But here's the funny thing. When I look back ten years later, you know what, I don't remember the stories we stuck
our neck out to publish that emerged from the hack. Really, it occurred to me recently that I couldn't remember a single revelation from that time, which struck me as odd, because why take a principled stand to publish something that wasn't even memorable enough to stick in my brain? Years later, A fresh doubt started to gnaught me how principled a decision. Could this have been if I couldn't even remember what
I was taking a stand for. Of course, a little googling brought it all flooding back, a random hodgepodge of fairly gossipy tidbits, sony executive and a movie producer making crude, racist jokes about then President Obama, another one calling Angelina Jolie a quote minimally talented, spoiled brat head quote, budget and salary figures from the movie the interview Celebrity Hotel aliases, Yeah, no, wonder, I couldn't remember this stuff right, But I'll tell you
what I do remember, quite vividly from that a decade ago, the pointed criticism that came for journalist decision makers like myself from some pretty prominent celebrities. Not just any celebrities, mind you, but a group of actors, writers, and directors that if I had made a top ten list of the Hollywood luminaries I admired most they'd all be on that list. So that felt good. We're talking Brad Pitt,
Judd Apatow. But let's start with the one that cut deeper than them all, because it was the only one that was targeted directly at me. The great screenwriter Aaron Sorkin not only wrote an op ed excoriating those like myself who published the contents of the Sony Hack, but in his piece singled me out and even linked to my commentary, which I thought was really cool at the time.
But let's get to the not cool part, which is where he mercilessly mocked me, and I quote the co editor in chief of Variety tells us he decided that the leaks were to use his word newsworthy. I'm dying to ask him what part of the studio's post production notes on Cameron Crowe's new project is newsworthy? So newsworthy that it's worth carrying out the wishes of people who've said they're going to murder families and who have so
far done everything they threatened to do. Newsworthy. As the character Innigo Montoya said in The Princess Bride, I do not think it means what you think it means. End quote, not contend to simply let his feelings be known. In a New York Times op ed, Sorkin actually went on The Today Show to pound the point home. Here's a clip.
Oscar winning screenwriter and playwright Aaron Sorkin. He's taking aim at the media and a New York Times op ed piece for publishing some of the emails and stolen information from that massive cyber attack against Sony Pictures. Erind's with us this morning.
Good morning, good morning.
Quote a little bit from your op ed, you say that the media has basically been quote more treason is and spectacularly dishonorable in publishing this. You do have a way with words, will grant you that? Is it your belief that the press should not have published this at all?
Yes, listen, I think that I talk about this in the op ed. There are certainly times when the press should has an obligation to publish things that we're stolen. I talk about the Pentagon papers, but you don't even have to use that as as your standard. Loosen the standards a little bit. Is there anything in these emails at all that's in the public interest that points to wrongdoing at the company that helps anyone in any way?
There isn't. There's just gossip there. You can loosen the standards even more, but ultimately you have to dispense with standards entirely in order to be okay with publishing these emails.
Wow, So this is a good place to begin walking through the reasoning behind my decision to publish. What Sorkin is essentially saying here is that it's not as if the press shouldn't publish stolen in information of any kind under any circumstances. But he is setting the bar above mere gossip and at what he calls wrongdoing, which we can presume means examples of corruption or malfeasance, and not
just filmmakers making racist jokes about the president. And I invoke that infamous example when I draw the distinction to make a point, by the way, which is to say, where does one draw the line at defining what exactly wrongdoing is? But let's not get caught up there. Regardless, for Sorkin, wrongdoing sets the bar for what he refers to as the public interest. And of course there's the other phrase he has fun mocking me with in his
op ed Newsworthy Look in all candor. These phrases are so amorphous as to have become over the years meaningless. Any clever editor can bend them to accommodate the raison to etra of all but the most vacuous pace of journalism. During the Sony hack, I read many a justification from others in the press about how publishing the hacked emails was okay because it held up a mirror to how the business of culture truly operates. I thought it was hogwash then, and I think it's hogwash now. Not that
it doesn't hold up a mirror. It does, but that the mirror alone doesn't justify the invasion of privacy. But I also didn't believe there has to be something truly revelatory on the level of, say, wrongdoing, as Sorkin might argue, in order to rise to the level of being worthy of publishing. Now, to explain what I mean by that, I want to explain what it is exactly I've done for a living for the past twenty years, because it's
at the core of my argument. You know, people who aren't in my business ask me from time to time where does news come from? And I know there's a certain kind of naivete that comes with the question. It almost sounds like they're asking if babies are delivered by storks. But there is some nuance to the answer. So let me lay out the answer for a bit here. I like to think of news coming in four different channels. First, there's what's on the record, through so called official channels.
Reporters get press releases, and there are sometimes press conferences, press calls, presentations, events, all these dog and pony shows where there is a controlled flow of informations from companies to the press, where they tell us what they'd like us to know about their companies. But what separates the best publications from the run of the mill publications is the information they get from others, shall we say, unofficial channels.
For instance, there is a second channel, let's say, the information that gets distributed off the record that not everyone gets. This is the information that's often marked exclusive, that gives you reason to read one publication and not another. Now, just to confuse you a little bit, Often times the off the record information comes from the same people that gives you the on the record information, they just don't identify themselves. That's the third channel of news, what i'd
call a leak. They're deliberately giving you information, but not through the official channels they typically give to everyone for one strategic reason or another. But lastly, and most importantly, there's a fourth channel where news is sourced, where the
reporter secures information they're not supposed to get. It might come from other people within the organization, or it might come from the ecosystem of companies that operate around the organization that might be divulging the information for all sorts of reasons. But the very best reporters are those that can traffic in that information. Now, on the entertainment beat, these are the people who get the scoop on say, the big movie coming together before the studio is ready
to announce it. Sometimes it gets even more sophisticated than that. We could break news of a multi billion dollar m and a deal before it's supposed to be announced. They even get the details of what the CEOs may have said to each other in a private conversation to make
said deal happen. I myself know of a few stories where financial documents were anonymously snail mailed to me, referring to all sorts of entertainment industry dealings, in one instance, a fairly major deal where I may have no idea of how the info was obtained, but once I confirmed it, I ran with it. Now, why am I telling you all this, because when you think about the information that
came about and the Sony hack. It's because it really wasn't all that different than the Fourth Channel information I traffic in almost every day. So when I hear the Aaron Sorkins of the world push back against it, what I'm hearing, to some extent is them really wishing what the Hollywood establishment more or less fought with me about every day back when I was co editor in chief, controlling the flow of information that gets into the public
on their terms. Now I know what you're thinking. The background explanation I just gave is all well and good, but it's irrelevant because the Sony hack isn't your ordinary circumstances. This wasn't some I don't know mogul snitching to you about a rival's extramarital affair with some startlet he cast in his next movie. This information came from a terrorist threatening people's lives, and I was aiding and abetting them. As Seth Rogan, star of the interview, said at the time,
quote everyone is doing exactly what these criminals want. It's stolen information that media outlets are directly profiting from. End quote. Look I get that. I acknowledged then that the hackers were essentially playing the press as winning pawns. I likened us as zombies, finelessly chasing any available information no matter what. But you also have to understand the slippery slope the
situation had the press sliding down into. As I just explained, my job is getting information about the business of entertainment, both important and not so important all the time. So this time the information came in bulk instead of the usual tidbits. Now, is there some kind of tonnage level where I should cut off the acceptable amounts of unauthorized information I'm allowed to accept? And more to the point, as for how savory a character I am allowed to
accept the information from? Where exactly do I draw the line between a North Korean hacker? Hacker? I should say, and for example, your typical Hollywood agent isn't. The simplest solution, given the impossibility of drawing clear lines, is to not draw lines at all. I also think you need to take into account the time in which this hack took place. Twenty fourteen was just a few years removed from the
dramas of Edward Snowden and years before that WikiLeaks. The lessons many learned from their stories was that the ends justified the means when it came to stolen information. Never mind that Sony is not a government and there didn't seem to be any corporate wrongdoing on that company to
report on. What's actually striking to me to reflect on now is how the optics would have been so much different in this situation if the hacked company in question was one of the bigger tech companies then, like Meta or Amazon or Apple. Something tells me, given the regulatory scrutiny they've come under for years, it would have changed
the equation dramatically. And it's ironic actually to be talking about a time when the US government was concerned about protecting Sony, considering here we are ten years later, and there was actually a brief possibility earlier this year that Sony could have joined the private e equity group Apollo Global Management and pursuing the acquisition of Paramount Global, a move that analysts expected would have drawn regulatory scrutiny of Sony because they are a foreign company that already owns
a film and TV studio. It's funny how the tables turned depending on the circumstances, you know. I also want to address there was criticism that I and many others in the media got back then, was that we published the Sony Hack content for clicks in all candor, well, I'm not going to deny that the web traffic value of gossipy articles never entered my mind at that time.
Anyone who knows anything of an entertainmenttainment about entertainment news can tell you that this kind of business minded editorial content from the Sony Hack is nowhere near the most call it click rich stories that generate the high six figure even seven figure unique visitor tolls that most empty
calorie famous person obituary stories generate. So really, it's kind of an absurd criticism to say we leaned into those stories intentionally to drive up those numbers, because they didn't make that much of a difference.
When we return more.
On my rationale in handling the Sony Hack and some of those regrets, do you know seven to ten consumers crave more authentic, culturally diverse stories in media. That's just one of the insights Amazon Ads uncovered, and it's from
ads to Zeitgeist research. The study, which surveyed over twenty one thousand respondents across twelve countries, identifies three key trends, including the shift towards a more globally integrated culture, the rise of interactive and collaborative content creation, and consumers desire for more distinctive voices and original content. Visit Advertising dot Amazon dot com slash culture Trends to view the full report and learn how your brands can connect with audiences
by participating in today's cultural conversations. We are back where I am talking about my rationale for handling the publishing of the contents of the Sony hack. You know, in the years since the Sony hack, it's been interesting to see what has changed and what hasn't. For instance, I think it would be it would surprise many to learn because we haven't seen a fiasco at the level of what Sony experienced in twenty fourteen, that hacks are still
a very big problem for the entertainment industry. Disney and Roku were hit by cyber attacks just this year, and in August, study by Unit forty two, the research armor of cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks, found that the media and entertainment industry is more vulnerable than just about any industry out there, as determined by the highest monthly growth in what's known as attax surface, the term for the total number of points within a software environment that are
vulnerable to a cyber attack. Who knows, We could see another Sony at any time if you think about it. But what has changed is how high profile hacks have played out in the press. Think about just two years after the Sony hack. For instance, Russia hacked the Democratic National Campaign sorry Democratic National Committee and turned over Hillary Clinton's emails to WikiLeaks, which in turn steadily fed the
press for months leading up to the presidential election. Many experts in retrospect believe that could have been a huge reason why she surprisingly lost to Donald Trump eight years later. Earlier this year, note that the media behaved quite differently when Iran hacked the Trump campaign, and some prominent newsrooms were approached with materials from Vice President j d Vance's dossier. This time around, the reflexive urge to publish was stifled.
There was much talk about not doing the bidding of overseas entities, not acting in the best entrance of the US of A. It was a far cry from the sensibility that had been drummed into my journalistic noggin since I was in college, which has been that the media is its own entity, not American or anything else, a third party observer that must be so steadfast in its neutrality that it has no allegiance to anything but its
own aggressive pursuit of truth. To a larger degree than you might realize, there's some hair splitting that comes with the territory here that makes tearing your hair out about the ethics of what to do here a little bit too precious. For instance, I don't know if there's that material difference between publishing the contents of the email from the hack and say, aggregating or describing the reporting elsewhere
of other publications who do publish those contents. And yet no less than the editor of The New York Times during that time did draw distinction, saying he would only cover newsworthy information surfaced by other outlets and not dig through the files itself, which gets nothing but a total eye roll for me. And yet I'd say that's at least a better solution than not reporting on the contents of the email at all, which to me feels like doing the worst possible thing a publication can do, which
is to ignore reality. If something is in the news cycle for good or for bad, once it's there. It's not like looking away from something makes it go away, So those purests, to me are even worse. The hair splitting becomes all the more ridiculous when you consider what was true then and more so now, which is that when you really think about it, the whole notion of the press in these hacking situations is really like an
unnecessary middleman. I mean, it's not like the hackers need the media's websites or the printing presses in order to display their stolen information to the public. The Internet is, after all, one big, open publishing platform, and together with social media, there's no intermediary required to direct the world's attention to something that will be of interest to them.
Getting media involvement is like having validation for the materials in question, a reputable tastemaker who can co sign for its importance, but isn't really essential to the equation, certainly not nowadays, when the establishing media almost seems like it be a detraction, which speaks to the utter futility of choosing not to have published the emails. Back then, principle, the stand as some might have seen it, variety would have, no doubt been part of a very quiet and small minority.
Had I any indication that we were influential enough to have set a standard, Otherwise, perhaps I would have felt differently. If anything, to be completely candid, it would have fueled the reputation my publication had earned over the years of being an industry lapdog, which I was not about to rekindle. Nevertheless, I'll confess to feeling a sense of regret to not having just stood out as the lonely minority back then
and sat out the feeding frenzy over those emails. Do I think it would have influenced anyone?
No?
Do I think it would have even been noticed to the point where it would have engendered some goodwill in the industry. Maybe a little, But the skeptic in me says we would have been just been carelessly tarred by the same brush as the rest of the media, which would have made the move feudile. But with a little more age and wisdom, I do wish I was a little less cynical then and just experimented with well not being a cynic. I didn't have that courage then. Maybe
were I in that position today, I still wouldn't. We'll never know, nor would I want to go through something like that again and find out.
Thanks for listening, be sure to leave us a review at Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music. We love to hear from listeners. Please go to Variety dot com and sign up for the free weekly Strictly Business newsletter, and don't forget to tune in next week for another episode of Strictly Business.
Do you know seven to ten consumers crave more authentic, culturally diverse stories in media. That's just one of the insights Amazon Ads uncovered, and it's from Ads to Zeitgeist Research. The study, which surveyed over twenty one thousand respondents across twelve countries, identifies three key trends, including the shift towards a more globally integrated culture, the rise of interactive and collaborative content creation, and consumers desire for more distinctive voices
and original content. Visit Advertising dot Amazon dot com slash Culture Trends to view the full report and learn how your brands can connect with audiences by participating in today's cultural conversations