As Election Nears, German Media Braces for Devious Hacks
The Clinton campaign, its supporters and even some in the media itself have complained since last summer
that American news organizations were all too ready to make themselves the weapons of a hostile foreign power, by happily reprinting emails from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton adviser John Podesta, which intelligence officials say were the fruit of Russian hacking.
BERLIN — To come here as an American on the eve of Germany’s next national political campaign is to go back in time to our own recent past, before the hacks
and the (Wiki)leaks led to the paralyzing debate over whether Russia intervened in our presidential election.
“It was out there very quickly, and very, very soon,
and of course there was a plan behind it,” he said, “and I’m not sure every journalist who used this material understood what was behind it.”
Should similarly stolen emails drop into the decidedly tamer media here, Mr. Brinkbäumer
told me, Der Spiegel would not use any information it couldn’t independently verify.
The Clinton campaign made plenty of mistakes.” But that, he said, “shouldn’t free the media from looking at
itself if this is going to be the norm — where foreign governments are going to interfere in elections.”
Mr. Fallon acknowledged that there had been some newsworthy material in the stolen emails.
If there hadn’t been, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, would not have had to resign (over emails showing she favored Mrs. Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the primary season),
and CNN would not have broken its contributors’ contract with Ms. Wasserman-Schultz’s interim successor, Donna Brazile (over emails showing she shared with the Clinton campaign a question proposed for a CNN/TVOne candidates’ town hall-style forum).
