Susanna Gibson and Kelly McBride: Leaks, Hacks, and Journalistic Ethics
This week, Michael and Lauren are joined by former candidate Susanna Gibson and the Poynter Institute's Kelly McBride to discuss the recent hacked information regarding Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance, the Washington Post story detailing explicit videos of Susanna, and how those stories relate to other instances of leaks and hacks through the evolving media landscape.
Episode Transcript
Michael Pope
I'm Michael Pope.
Lauren Burke
I'm Lauren Burke.
Michael Pope
This is Pod Virginia. A podcast that's receiving leaked information. The leak we've got is that we're going to have a great podcast today. We're gonna talk about leaks; where do they come from? What should journalists do about them, and when is it a good idea for news organizations to ignore them?
Lauren Burke
And wow, we have some amazing guests to help us explore these issues. Returning to the podcast, we are joined by a former candidate for the House of Delegates whose campaign last year was upended after a Republican operative shared screenshots of chatter bait with the Washington Post. Susanna Gibson, thanks for returning to Pod Virginia.
Susanna Gibson
I'm thrilled to be here.
Michael Pope
We're also joined by another returning guest. She is Senior Vice President and Chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute. Kelly McBride, thanks for coming back on Pod Virginia.
Kelly McBride
I'm happy to be here.
Michael Pope
This is gonna be a fun show; buckle up. All right, the media world is buzzing this week about the 271-page vetting document. The JD Vance vetting document was leaked to three top news organizations; Politico, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. The news organizations chose to ignore the content of the leak and instead focused their attention and news reporting on the hack and leak operation. Susanna Gibson, you have some thoughts about this, and I want to hear your reaction to this. But first, I want you to catch our listeners up on your story. Last year, you were a candidate for the House of Delegates when leaked images of you were reported in the Washington Post and other news organizations. A lot of our listeners might think they know what happened. Still, I guarantee you, listeners, this story is murkier than you realize. Susanna Gibson, we'll start with you. What exactly happened last year?
Susanna Gibson
I will keep it as quick and concise as I can. Essentially, about eight weeks before my election, there was a Republican operative who found illegal recordings of me on a dark web pornography site and had downloaded them into a drop box. Shopped them around to various media outlets, many of whom declined to cover this or write about it. They said it was not a story, which I agree with. But the Washington Post decided to run with it. And we went back and forth with the Washington Post for about two days, which I will say were among the worst days of my entire life. It's horrific to feel like you're essentially being blackmailed by a major national news organization that is writing an article trying to charge you for prostitution. Despite making it very clear, crystal clear, I believe, is what my attorney's letter said, that I never acknowledged or consented to any kind of intimate recordings being taken. Much less recorded and put on illegal pornography sites, and I had no idea. Unfortunately, when the Washington Post decided that they were going to write about it, they wrote about it from an angle that felt very misleading, untrue, and judgmental. I think the headline was, Virginia Dem House Candidate Performed Sex Online With Husband For Tips. The word tips was mentioned a dozen -ish times; actually, I think it was seven. However, several times throughout this article, it is misleading in so many ways. I have seen it, and it's heartening to watch. The media has really started turning a corner, I would say, just the past few months since the Taylor Swift deep fake recordings came out; the media has changed the way they understand and report on the non-consensual distribution of intimate images, which is great. We still have a ton of work to do. Society really trivializes the harm and damage that's done to the victims. And understanding consent in the digital age is something we're not great at. But I do have hope that we're getting better. One of the things my organization is doing is working on a resource guide for the media and working on media education about the harm and damage that's done, image-based sexual abuse, and all of those things.
Michael Pope
Kelly McBride, I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your expertise here. I want to draw a relationship between these two stories. We're talking to Susanna Gibson, who had to deal with leaked documents. These images were screen captures that were leaked to the Washington Post. The story with the JD Vance 271-page document. Can we call that a leak? Is this a leaked document that we're talking about, or is something else going on here?
Kelly McBride
This is a hacked document. A leak is something that is released from inside an organization. A hacked document is something that an outsider breaks into the digital files of an organization. In this case, the best information is that Iran broke into the computers of the Republican Party. They obtained this file and probably other files that are probably going to come out over the course of the election. So, there is a little bit of a difference between a hack and a leak.
Michael Pope
Susanna Gibson, I'd love to get your perspective on what was going through your mind over the weekend when you were reading about Politico, the Washington Post, and The New York Times receiving this 271-page document from someone called Robert, who was using an AOL address. They decided that they were going to not publish the content of what was in the document and instead report about the process. What was going through your mind when all this was going on?
Susanna Gibson
Well, you know, it's funny because it definitely was a little triggering for me. One of the things I thought about was focusing on how they got this information; I do think that's a good thing. I'm not necessarily upset that they didn't cover it or report on it. I don't know that it was wrong for them to choose not to do that. But I will say, when I was going back and forth with the Washington Post for those 48 hours, in my mind, it was, oh my gosh, this woman running for office, now a Republican operative, found these non-consensual, intimate images of her, downloaded them and shopped them around trying to influence the outcome of an election that very well could have been the deciding vote on abortion access in Virginia. To me, that was the story of how this happened and how we treat female candidates running for office. The story was not that I had kinky sex with my husband years ago. I never made any money and certainly never agreed or consented to them being recorded. I really wish that was the angle that could have been taken from the story. I think a lot of things were at play there. I think the media is incentivized to write about and cover things that will get them the most clicks and shares. Slapping a picture of a young, blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman who looks about as innocent a soccer mom as you can next to the headline, she's having sex online with her husband for tips. That's going to get clicks. One thing that was upsetting to me and compounded the trauma that I was going through was that every single major news organization just took the story as truth and fact and ran with it. They repeated these things, the same story over and over again. No one really did any independent verification of what actually happened and what the truth was. I would argue that a House candidate in the state of Virginia running for office who is the victim of non-consensual, intimate images being recorded, image-based sexual abuse. It's horrific, just in and of itself. To have them take that viewpoint, I think one has to do with the author and the editor's age and the generation she grew up in, which was the generation of second-wave feminism, radical feminism. Which is anti-pornography, anti-sex business, and in stark contrast to where we are now in sex-positive feminism, third-wave, and fourth-wave feminism, and I think technology illiteracy kind of also played a role in that as well.
Kelly McBride
I am so sorry that this happened to you. It really does seem like somebody was recording those videos that you assumed were not recording, but that you were streaming and not recording an image on the internet was a true violation. I just want to acknowledge that. Are there errors in the Washington Post story that have not been corrected?
Susanna Gibson
There are a few. When it was originally published, I think at about 3:00, maybe 3:30, they went back and edited it about three hours later. They did make some corrections. One of the things that they had said was that I had multiple accounts. I never had any account. I never had an account, I never made money. It said, instead of a husband, it said with a man. We had to get them to go back and correct that. Unfortunately, with anti-slap laws, there's enough truthfulness, albeit misleading and misguided. Still, there's enough truthfulness that, yes, I could file a defamation suit. But to what end.
Michael Pope
One thing I think that's worth talking about on this podcast, and Susanna Gibson, you brought this up when you were recounting this at the top of the show. Which is the use of the word tips. It makes it sound as though you made money, but in fact, you personally never made a dime on any of this. Is that correct?
Susanna Gibson
That's correct. I never made any money. I had kinky sex with my husband literally a handful of times years ago. But unfortunately, with illegal pornography, what happens as I've learned about this from starting my nonprofit, my PAC, and being a sounding board for women across the country. But what happens is that these images get digitally manipulated and put on other illegal pornography sites. They were never on Pornhub or one of these more legal sites. But, yeah, I never made any money, and I think they focused on that and kind of justified it. They wrote this lengthy story, and you can kind of feel they were really struggling to justify even running this piece. They focused on how I supposedly broke the terms and conditions of this site, which I absolutely did not. Multiple people have said, Nope, you definitely did not. And there have been some stories that have come out about that. But that's kind of what they used to justify writing this story.
Lauren Burke
I think the situation, when we look back on that story, Susanna, I wonder, did the Washington Post really take a lot of time to ask the question; is this story something that should be published in the first place?
Susanna Gibson
It was not.
Lauren Burke
It's hard to tell. But for me, as somebody who's been in the media at big media companies, the usual thing that was focused on is whether or not something was accurate or not. Whether or not it was true or not. When the JD Vance story came out, I thought, are you kidding me that that's not going to get published, when that document has already been established, as a fact, that information did come from the campaign. There is some indication that what may be underlying is accurate after watching things like the Steele dossier and things that have gotten into publication without a whole lot of checking. I'm amazed sometimes when I talk to journalistic organizations that there really is no recourse for anyone, and I don't care what anyone says; there is no recourse for an elected official. Susanna, in your situation, you are a candidate, but an elected official can sue all they want. They are not going to win as long as Time v. Sullivan is there, and that media organization knows that.
Kelly McBride
Lauren, I actually completely disagree with you on that. First of all, we're painting with a very broad brush here. The Steele dossier, the JD Vance dossier, and the Susanna case are completely different events. The Steele dossier was a dossier that was shopped around by many news organizations. One news organization, Buzzfeed, published the whole thing and said we have not been able to verify this. Many other news organizations immediately reported that they had received the dossier. Because they could not verify it, they didn't publish anything. You can't paint, and you can't say that because BuzzFeed published the Steele dossier, and everybody else did that. That was one news organization, and in this case, with Susanna, I really do think that the Washington Post was asking itself if the voters in Virginia would be interested in this story and if it was relevant to the voters in Virginia. I don't think they were trying to; first of all, the Washington Post doesn't make money on clicks. They make money on subscriptions, but things that are really sensational don't drive subscribers. It's not fair to say that they do it for money because that's not how the business model on a subscription site works. I honestly believe that they thought they were serving their audience and that their audience would be interested in this information. I think it's unfair to say that they did it simply because it would sell, and it would sell their site because it actually won't. That's not how their business model works.
Susanna Gibson
Have you read this particular article?
Kelly McBride
I'm looking at it right now.
Susanna Gibson
Read it
Kelly McBride
I'm looking at it right now.
Susanna Gibson
It was written in a way. And again, I do think that there are a lot of different factors that went into the particular slant of the author and journalist who wrote it. I do think that a lot of different variables were involved. I think her understanding of technology, and I think her understanding of what consent and the right to intimate privacy look like in our digital age; I think a lot of people still do not understand and really trivialize the harm and damage that's done to victims of non-consensual distribution of intimate images. I think by not quite understanding all of those things and why I do have a right to privacy, why I did have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and essentially writing this in a slant that makes it sound like I was still doing this when I was running for office. Saying, Oh, well, it has to do with your judgment. Well, no, it has to do with your judgment of my sex life with my husband from years ago. The voters do not need to know about my bedroom. It's completely not relevant to the work I can do in the State House.
Lauren Burke
I also think if you...
Kelly McBride
Is that an error? They said that the videos were streamed on September 30, 2022. Is that an error in the Post article?
Susanna Gibson
I'm pulling it up right now, and they said it was uploaded and archived on other sites, one in particular called Recurbate, which is an illegal pirate site that had uploaded various chunks. My understanding is that I still haven't. I think I told Michael and Lauren the last time I was on, but I haven't watched it. There are hundreds of videos of me online, and illegal pornography sites take these videos and chop them up. I have no control over when a pirate dark website uploads whatever videos or chunks of a video, real and authentic or digitally generated or manipulated. So that's what it says. It doesn't say when I did it. It's written in a way that people believe and understand as if they were done then.
Kelly McBride
Exactly, yeah. And so if that's, I mean, I'm assuming that you clarified that for them when you were talking to them.
Susanna Gibson
To be honest, the two days that we were going back and forth with them. I mean, I just need everyone here to understand it; I think the public, too. I was talking to a young woman yesterday who lives in Florida, who, 10 years ago, in 2013, had an ex-boyfriend publish images of her that went viral. That she had actually taken and given to him two or three years prior. She was a senior in college when he posted these, and she was actually able to help and lobby for Florida's very first if you want to call it revenge porn; although I hate the term, I'll save everyone time, law. So we're speaking in a mutual appointment to connect us, and she's crying. It's 10 years later, and one of the things that she said that really hit home and is so true with me is she felt like she blacked out for years. That's kind of the state that I was in. I couldn't lift my head up off the floor; I couldn't eat or drink water. I couldn't understand what my attorney was saying. I'd have to put it on speakerphone so that a member of my team, my husband, or a friend could hear it. Because I couldn't remember what was told to me or said 30 seconds prior. Because that's significant trauma, just point blank, period. Then, I have to go back and forth with them. I wasn't the one doing it. I would have my team or attorney saying hey, they're saying this, or Hey, can we clarify that? All of these things and so on.
Michael Pope
The question from Kelly McBride is, did you clarify all this to the Washington Post? It sounds like your answer was that you tried to, but it was a very dark period for you.
Susanna Gibson
Yeah, I would say that's accurate. I would say I have a few different letters from the Washington Post explaining that there is case law precedent in Virginia establishing that consenting to the creation of an image that is supposed to last only for a moment in time is not the same thing as consenting to the creation of an image that can last in perpetuity and be shared. The creation of an image is point blank, period; consenting to that is not the same as consenting to it being distributed.
Lauren Burke
Were you getting responses? Back to Michael's question, Susanna, were you getting responses from the Washington Post, or was your attorney getting responses from the Washington Post when you set out to clarify certain information?
Susanna Gibson
We went back and forth with them, and we went back and forth with their legal team as well. They felt like it was in the public interest. Again, I would push back on that and say it really wasn't. If there was something of the public interest, it should have been, hey, a Republican operative or political operative is shopping around non-consensual illegal pornography found on Dark Web illegal porn sites. Most of the time, those images are on illegal pornography sites; the large majority of the time, they are non-consensual imagery of young women, and most women have no idea they were even on there. I certainly did not.
Michael Pope
You mentioned public interest. I'd love to get Kelly McBride to explain to us when news organizations are trying to determine what is in the public interest. They're maybe looking at images like the ones that we're talking about; what is the test? What is the thing that's going to make them hit the button to publish these stories?
Kelly McBride
At that time, Susanna was running for public office, and part of the test was whether this person was going to be asking for votes, money, and trust from constituents. Would constituents find this piece of information relevant as they make the decision whether they were going to vote, donate or trust this representative to represent them. I think that was probably the driving force behind their decision. I wish they would have named the source.
Lauren Burke
They did.
Susanna Gibson
They do.
Lauren Burke
They named it, and they basically said it was a GOP.
Kelly McBride
They did. They described him. But I think I would.
Susanna Gibson
They gave him anonymity despite his breaking the law.
Kelly McBride
Yeah, yeah, exactly right. Like he is, I think that person should have their name on this story.
Lauren Burke
I guess I think a little bit bigger picture on these things. I think the answer to some of the Susanna Gibson story is found in the second paragraph of the story, which goes, Susanna Gibson, a nurse practitioner and mother of two young children running in a highly competitive suburban Richmond District... That mother of two young children. Just to say the quiet part out loud.
Susanna Gibson
Oh yeah.
Lauren Burke
Women are not supposed to do this type of thing. Like we're supposed to be, not sexual. I think that she was judged on that level. It was seen as, Oh, my God, this woman running, and she's on this video, and it doesn't matter whether or not consent is not an issue. It doesn't matter that it's her husband. It's just that she is doing it. When I think about her story and the Katie Hill story. Congresswoman Katie Hill, who resigned, and then I think about some of the editorial board meetings I've been in at the Washington Post and others like it. We had a story in Virginia back in 2018 where we had a candidate for Fairfax Board of Supervisors, Alicia Plerhoples, who was complaining loudly; she posted to her Facebook, it was covered by some bloggers in Virginia that a member of the board the Washington Post asked her how she was going to raise children and run for office. So, it struck me as a moment of patriarchy and misogyny. What happened with Susanna Gibson when I later thought about it. When the original story came out, I had the same view that most people might have, which was, well, yeah, the public should know that. Then, when more details came out, I talked to Susanna Gibson and found more details that came out. I completely changed my view of it. And I was a little surprised, frankly, that the Washington Post did not publish another story to clarify what that story really was. To me, that is sort of their habit, the Post and The New York Times, which is that if they get something incorrect, getting them to admit that is near impossible. Frankly, under the law, they really don't have to; they have no duty to investigate. If they get something wrong on a major story, they're going to go quiet.
Kelly McBride
My experience with both of those publications has been different. My experience is that when you point out a factual error, they correct it pretty quickly. Especially around something like this. Because this does make them vulnerable to a libel lawsuit or a defamation lawsuit. My experience is that they correct things pretty quickly. What I think this case is most comparable to is that we don't know what's in the JD Vance dossier, but what's been described in that dossier is stuff that is already publicly available. Mostly, what it shows is how he has changed his political opinions over the years to advantage himself. That's what's in the dossier. It doesn't sound like there's anything very sensational in that dossier. What's more similar or comparable to this is what was on the Hunter Biden laptop. Which was a lot of images and videos of Hunter Biden having sex and doing drugs. The New York Post, which is a tabloid, not only talked about those images but republished some of them. I think that's an example where you can see a news organization truly out to harm and humiliate an individual for sexual activity.
Lauren Burke
Well, part of the issue, of course, is that there is partisanship within the press on the right and left. But Hunter Biden is not an elected official, so part of...
Kelly McBride
But they were trying to hurt an elected official, right? They were trying to hurt Joe Biden by doing that.
Lauren Burke
Correct. But part of my experience with the media is they understand. Again, their general counsels understand that when they publish something about an elected official that may or may not be true and may or may not be provable, they're not afraid of that. In large part, it is because they understand that elected officials...
Kelly McBride
I completely disagree. I completely disagree.
Lauren Burke
Tell us what the legal recourse is for an elected official who's accused of something that's not true? What is the legal recourse?
Kelly McBride
The part that I disagree with is that the press publishes things that they know are not true.
Lauren Burke
No, they publish things that they can't possibly know are true. That's happened many times. That's happened many times, from Andrew Cuomo to Al Franken.
Kelly McBride
In every one of those cases that you just cited, there was evidence, or there were named sources making the allegation.
Lauren Burke
It was a person talking. Right. You don't know if it's true. You know the person is talking. But you can't verify what somebody says, particularly when we go back 20 and 30 years.
Kelly McBride
But covering a political official when you have a named source saying.
Lauren Burke
Right.
Kelly McBride
A credible source saying this person did. And with Al Franken, there was a photograph.
Lauren Burke
There was a photograph. Okay, so we're publishing that there was a photograph. Then, eight cases later, we're publishing that he is involved in sexual harassment of some type. Then Jane Mayer came along and wrote an almost 4,000-word story verifying that it was all political. He was the target of a political hit, and everybody rushed to judgment. Which is exactly what happened. But it was published, and it damaged him. He resigned from the US Senate, and there was no coming back from that.
Kelly McBride
But what you're saying is that stuff was untrue.
Lauren Burke
No, I'm saying that...
Kelly McBride
No, you did. You said that the press publishes information that is untrue. They publish information that is provided by political operatives. Yes, and that's what's really upsetting, I think, is that a lot of this information comes out because of opposition research. And this is the other side trying to discredit somebody.
Lauren Burke
The media since the Me Too movement. So, let's say that 2017 has gotten into the habit of publishing information that could not possibly be verified as true. Particularly when that information is 20 and 30 years old.
Michael Pope
But isn't there a distinction here between, you say, publishing information that they can't know is true, what they are publishing is are the allegations, and here's the named person who we're naming, who is making the allegation, and we know it's true that this person is making the allegation.
Kelly McBride
And this is a powerful public official who should be held accountable, right? And should answer to these allegations.
Lauren Burke
They know that it's true that someone is saying something, of course. But it's the media's job to verify the truth before publication. Okay, now, when it comes to elected officials, quite frankly, they do not have to do that because of Time v. Sullivan. The malice standard is not provable. And if you can give me an example of where a public official has won, I would love to hear it. That doesn't happen in real life. That's a theory. So yes, you can publish what someone says, but if you can't verify what they say is accurate and is the truth, you should be checking that before publication. We have seen several stories over the last six years where things have been published later, and I will tell you the Jane Mayer example. If everybody had Jane Mayer investigating some of these stories, we would have quite a world of journalism. But quite frankly, most journalists are not anywhere near as good as Jane Mayer. What happened in Franken's case, for example, is that those things were published, and then she looked into it, and we found that it was a completely different story. I think Susanna Gibson's story, in that sense, mirrors that when that first story came out, it looked like one thing. Then, when talking to Ms Gibson, I felt like, wow, this is another story. Frankly, to your point about subscription models and how news organizations make money, we know that these types of stories you're combining, often, power and sex and celebrity in a story that is going to get web traffic and that is going to drive subscriptions. People are very aware of that. In listening to Will Lewis, who, of course, is the new publisher of The Washington Post, he's extremely aware of that.
Kelly McBride
The news media didn't force Al Franken to resign; his colleagues did.
Lauren Burke
Based on the information they were reading in the media, of course.
Michael Pope
I want to take our conversation in a slightly different direction. Kelly McBride, you brought up the Hunter Biden laptop. This plays an interesting role in this discussion because it's a fulcrum point. It's a changing point. Before the Hunter Biden laptop, we will all remember that in 2016, we had documents that were hacked by Russia. Stolen documents from Russia. Russia stole the documents, and then they appeared all over WikiLeaks, and all of the major news media took that stolen information and ran with it. But then, in the Hunter Biden laptop, there was a change in how the media approached this kind of thing. Now that we're looking at potentially hacked information and hacked documents from Iran, that's a continuation of this new approach. What we're now seeing is an evolving approach from the media on how exactly responsible media organizations should respond to receiving stolen information or hacked information. Kelly McBride, you put your finger on the Hunter Biden laptop, specifically as a changing point, right?
Kelly McBride
Yeah, although this is complicated. Because there is no central authority that makes all these decisions. Every single newsroom makes its own decisions about how it's going to handle these things. If you go back to Hillary Clinton's emails, just to refresh the whole story, she kept a private server, and she had been investigated while she was Secretary of State. There had been the assault on US forces in Benghazi. There were lots of questions about whether there was a congressional investigation that was said to be politically motivated and about how she handled that. Then, it was revealed that she kept a private server with government documents on it. Then, it was revealed that some of those documents were missing. That was when then-candidate Trump invited Russia to hack and find those emails. Then, there was a hack by Russia. Those emails were released and published. The whole trove of them were published in a couple of different tranches on WikiLeaks. This is in 2016, and the media covered that. They looked through all of those emails, and they did so for a number of reasons. One is the emails were regarding a time when Hillary Clinton was in office. She was serving the Obama administration, and she was in a very prominent role. So, the emails themselves dealt with topics that were interesting. They revealed new information about how our government was operating and what was going on in the name of the United States and its citizens in foreign countries. As those emails were covered, the content of those emails received a lot of coverage because it was deemed to be newsworthy. The Hunter Biden laptop is different because it's a laptop that was shopped around by a bunch of news organizations. We know the Wall Street Journal turned it down. But Giuliani was taking this laptop and telling people it was Hunter Biden's laptop. It's got a bunch of stuff on it. Eventually, the Washington Post, or the New York Post, sorry, the New York Post said, yeah, we'll do it. They started publishing a series of stories, but they did not publish all of the emails or all of the information that would be considered interesting about his time on the board of an energy company in Ukraine. Emails that were relevant to whether he had promised his father, who was then the Vice President, any sort of favors. They didn't publish the whole tranche of those emails. So, the rest of the media couldn't do anything other than simply report what the New York Post was reporting. But they couldn't see the evidence. Now, the New York Post is not considered to be the most reliable investigative news organization. Most news media felt very uncomfortable simply repeating what the New York Post was reporting without being able to see any of the initial evidence. The New York Post was more interested in the salacious stuff that was on the laptop. They were in the emails about peddling influence. So the media and everybody ignored the New York Post when that happened. They also fought because they had been advised by US intelligence that the laptop was likely either fake or had been somehow provided by Russia. They also thought that it was a state operation.
Michael Pope
We now know that's not the case, correct?
Kelly McBride
We now know that is not the case, right. But, news organizations at the time thought it was the case.
Michael Pope
This is part of the evolving approach here. Now we come to the modern day, and we've got these hacked and leaked documents. Hacked by Iran.
Kelly McBride
Likely Iran; we don't know for sure, but it's likely. Microsoft and the federal government are both saying it's likely Iran.
Michael Pope
These documents were likely hacked by Iran, and they were shared by this person, Robert, with the AOL email address, with Politico, the Washington Post, and The New York Times.
Kelly McBride
And a bunch of other news organizations.
Michael Pope
And a bunch of others, okay, well, I only read about those three. But in any event, it's being shopped around by a bunch of news organizations. But now there's this different approach. Where Susanna Gibson comes in. Because I know Susanna Gibson's reaction to the JD Vance documents was, well, now you're gonna have ethics. And now you're gonna not report stuff.
Susanna Gibson
You saw my Twitter, huh?
Michael Pope
That's why I wanted to explore these issues on the show.
Susanna Gibson
Yeah, I mean, again, I'm not necessarily saying they should have published the JD Vance documents. I would argue that they never should have published mine. But one thing I found encouraging is that I was reading what the Washington Post Executive Director Matt Murray actually said about their decision not to publish that all of the news organizations in this particular case took a deep breath, paused, and thought about who was likely to be leaking the documents. What were their motives, and whether or not this was truly newsworthy or not? I found that encouraging.
Lauren Burke
That's a new concept.
Susanna Gibson
Well, in my experience, it's new. But it was a little frustrating, I will say; I've been working with a few different people, and I've been lucky to have a few different people join the board of my nonprofit that we're starting. Nina Jankowicz is a disinformation researcher and was the head of the Disinformation Division of the Department of Homeland Security. Nina is on my board, and we've gotten to know each other. She's a young woman and has had experiences similar to mine. Where she was tapped to be the head of this division, she's not political. Tapped to be the head of this new division back in 2022, the Biden administration did a very poor job explaining the rollout of this new division and what they were going to do. The conservative media, Fox News specifically, kind of pounced on it and pounced on her specifically. She's the CIA of censorship, and she's going to be monitoring American's communication and all that. The subsequent media fallout for her; she was pregnant. She was eight months pregnant. I believe she was seven or eight months pregnant with her first child. Is that what happened to me? Happened to her because of the media coverage. She got doxxed. She had to move out of her house in the middle of the night because of incredible death threats that were coming in. She couldn't go into public places. She can't do some of the things she used to. She did public theater, and she can't do that anymore because of the harassment and abuse that she's experienced because of that media coverage and news coverage. As someone who's gone through it and experienced it, we're talking hundreds of death threats.
Kelly McBride
But what happened to Nina was the result of a right-wing attack. It was a political attack. The media, I thought, was pretty fair, except for a couple of right-wing media. Again, I don't think we can paint.
Susanna Gibson
Fox News specifically.
Kelly McBride
Yeah, right, but it's unfair to say that it was all of the media.
Susanna Gibson
I don't think I said that.
Kelly McBride
No, you did say that. You said what happened to her because of the media?
Susanna Gibson
Yes, I did, and at first, I had clarified Fox News specifically. Which is why she's in the middle of the lawsuit with Fox News. But for the general media, I do think it's really important when they are publishing these things to think about the potential harm that is done to the individual and politicians, too. Even though Nina is not a politician, we are human beings too. I think in this digital age and the age we're in, online violence and abuse very quickly escalate to in-person violence and abuse. Especially if you're going to write stories. That I don't sensational is not the right word.
Lauren Burke
Especially if you're going to write stories that are going to potentially destroy somebody's life, yeah, absolutely. I remember Dean Baquet had sent a memo to his staff when he was there for people to sort of ease up on Twitter. I think what kind of started this cycle of publishing first and investigating later was journalists seeing stuff on Twitter and social media and wanting to keep up with that. Which is extremely difficult to do, if not impossible. Frankly, these platforms are protected because of Section 230 in terms of content that's on them, and that's problematic for the platform. I do think we're in a media age where almost anything can get published, and there's no recourse for the individual who's damaged by that information.
Michael Pope
But you know, we're also in an era where the media's approach to this is evolving. Kelly McBride, I want to return to this thread because, in 2016, all the media organizations went with this information stolen from Russia. Now, in 2024, media organizations are holding a document. What is this, a 172-page document? Stolen by Iran, probably stolen by Iran. And they're saying to themselves, do I want to report this or not? There is an evolving approach here. When people see that the media is not reporting on the JD Vance vetting document. It's partially because maybe it's boring, and maybe it's public stuff that's already available, and it's just a bunch of clips from JD Vance appearing on the Tucker Carlson Show. That is a possibility. But there's also an evolving approach here from the media organizations on how they deal with documents and information hacked by foreign governments, right?
Kelly McBride
But, it is not set in stone. And if you are a good journalist or a good journalism organization, you have three primary loyalties. You have a loyalty to your audience and to help them understand the world and participate in democracy. And then you have a loyalty to the truth, to get true information out there. And then, finally, you have a loyalty to democracy. In this particular case, we see that there are governments that are specifically trying to destabilize our democracy. These news organizations are saying, one, I don't want to be a tool in that. And two, that actually compromises my loyalty to my audience and helps them participate in democracy. If I do something that destabilizes democracy, I have undermined my primary loyalty to my audience. I actually think that those are easier decisions than when the information comes from regular old oppo research.
Susanna Gibson
Yeah, I agree with that.
Michael Pope
Well, we've got to wrap it up. So I'd love the last thoughts from Susanna Gibson and Kelly McBride. Susanna Gibson, we'll start with you. When you were reading all this stuff about JD Vance and these news organizations making the decision to not publish stuff, I would imagine that you had quite a reaction to that. But I think in our conversation, we've kind of pushed that forward a little bit. This is a complicated and nuanced thing for journalists who have an obligation, as Kelly McBride was just telling us to, facts, the truth, and even democracy.
Susanna Gibson
Yeah. And again, I'm heartened by, I'm frustrated but also heartened by the fact that they did choose not to participate and publish these documents. I'm also heartened by, as you guys know, I care a lot about misogyny in the media. I could go on and on about how important specific words are, using gendered language, and all of that. But I'm really starting to see an evolution in that, I think, for the better.
Michael Pope
Kelly McBride, I have one final thought for you. I'm curious. So Susanna Gibson is a millennial. This is an issue where Millennials have lots of images and videos floating out there, out on the internet, and we are going to be journalists dealing with this for many years to come, right?
Kelly McBride
Yeah. I suspect that public opinion is going to change on this. I'm really surprised that it affected Susanna's election because I think a lot of voters would look at that and say that it doesn't seem like a big deal to me. I think that eventually, the audience is going to say, this stuff isn't that big of a deal. Lots of people have stuff like this in their past, and it's not that interesting.
Michael Pope
Well, this podcast has been interesting. I really appreciate you both coming to the show. Susanna Gibson and Kelly McBride, thanks for coming to Pod Virginia.
Kelly McBride
Thanks for having me.
Susanna Gibson
Yep. Thanks.
