CNN host Brian Stelter provided a platform for The Daily Beast to promote its hunting down and publicly outing the person who slowed down a video of Nancy Pelosi to make her appear even worse than she usually does in a recent viral video.
The leftist ‘news’ site, which is owned by the multibillion-dollar megacorporation InterActiveCorp, published the man’s full name, the city and specific area he lives in, his employment details, and even his arrest record.
NEW: I went looking for the Russian troll behind the 'Drunk Pelosi' viral video hoax. Turns out he's an itinerant forklift operator from the Bronx who's been secretly running hard-right "news" outlets across social media for years. Also, not Russian. https://t.co/mChiyVqy0B
— Kevin Poulsen (@kpoulsen) June 1, 2019
The Daily Beast received huge backlash for doxxing a private citizen over political opinions.
Drag an African-American day laborer into the spotlight and try to ruin his life because he made a trivial video about Nancy Pelosi. The only worse part is how you're celebrating yourselves like you did something brave and important. Nauseating. https://t.co/XI5yTRaiTX
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 2, 2019
Here’s our story on the convicted felon, @kpoulsen, who doxxed this black American: https://t.co/XjwXAKJc9p
— Big League Politics (@bigleaguepol) June 2, 2019
No matter to Stelter, who expressed outrage that the man had made ad revenue on the video of Pelosi (who appears stuttering and slow at the best of times anyway).
Questioning Daily Beast editor Noel Shachtman, Stelter said “The people saying you shouldn’t have named him because he’s a private citizen. I’m seeing a lot of people saying you all were responsible for outing him.”
“I don’t think that’s accurate. First of all, I think he outed himself, you know, by attaching his name to several fake news sites that then pushed the video,” Shachtman responded, to which Stelter simply replied ‘okay’.
Shachtman also argued that the doxxing wasn’t a big issue because the man “spoke to our reporter at length and on the record for an hour and a half.”
However, he also expressed a concern about his privacy, which was almost completely disregarded by the Daily Beast.
“Then we also withheld some information that he didn’t — that he didn’t want out there, that he felt would impinge on his privacy.” Shachtman argued.
“So, I am glad that these people want to protect the privacy of this man. But I think our actions, in this case, were right on the money.” The editor added, with no push back from Stelter at all.
CNN has also engaged in doxxing of Trump supporters in the past on more than one occasion.
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