Hacks, Olympics, and “Boomscrolling” 47:12

No, no, I'm a fly fisherman. I fished once. How was that? I caught a fish and then I held it and it was so icky and I threw it right into the water. It was so slippery. I didn't like it at all holding it. Yeah, it's the downside of fishing.

I'm Ben Smith. I'm Naeem Araza. And this is Mixed Signals from Summer 4 Media. Today we're going to take a moment to absorb the positive vibes of summer programming. The Olympics have just ended. There's this kind of patriotism in the air. Some would say it's even seeped into the U.S. press, which at this moment is declining to publish reports that were leaked in an apparent Iranian hack of the Donald Trump campaign.

So we're going to talk about that. And we're also going to talk about the ethics involved here. This is kind of heavy subject of hacks, leaks, and the ethics of publishing ill-begotten information, something you, Ben, know a little bit about. Yeah, that is a thing that I have gotten a number of people mad at me about through the years. So maybe we should just talk about the Olympics. Ah, Ben, always dodging that bullet. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.

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So Ben, first, it's really good to see you. How was your holiday? Good. I went fishing in Maine in a place with no cell phone reception, which was amazing. Were you online? I was not online. I was in his fellowship seminar, and we were phoneless in that room. My screen time was actually down to an hour a day. How was that? It was amazing. It made me want to go to one of these schools where they're banning social media and cell phones, you know? Like an elementary school? Yes, exactly. What would you do there?

I don't know. I'd play with blocks. I don't know. Just enjoy life, Ben. Play. Delight. Expand my mind. Yeah. So I was fishing. It does feel good. It does feel good. I remember talking to you right before I went into seminar. Tim Waltz had been selected as vice president, and you had just found out hours later. A day later. It was actually— It's so fascinating to get news from word of mouth. I had gotten out of the woods and was driving and started calling people.

And our reporter, Shelby Talcott, was like, oh, have you heard the news from yesterday? The nominee is Tim Walz. And it was just sort of fun to experience news in a more normal, less full-on way. Did you delight in not knowing? Or were you like, what else do I not know? No, I think it's kind of binary. Like, for me at least, the needle needs to be like fully in my vein.

Or I need to be totally relaxed. But some news you could not miss is the Olympics. Did you watch it? I watched as much as I could, yeah. Did they have a fishing Olympics? No, but, you know, the host country gets to select a sport. I think the French fruit was breakdancing. But I do think that, like, Bass Pro Tournaments could be the American way. Could you qualify? Would you leave me to become an Olympian?

No. Did you watch the Olympics? I did. I did. I think it was, it's so funny. We're so polarized and it's this very nice moment of shared patriotism. Like look at diverse multiracial Americans across genders and generations, just like being the winningest country. It was such a positive moment. I didn't watch it all, but my favorite moment was being in the gym and seeing all the guys.

hushed watching four foot eight Simone Biles doing her thing. I thought that was so cool. Right. It's such a simple, great moment. The media around it also, there's a kind of NBC interview with a soft focus camera that's incredible, you know, that's old school and inspiring. And then there's

Like the fun new gimmicks, like the heart rate monitors on the parents. I mean, I thought, yeah, and it was a great media moment. It was a great media business moment, actually. So, okay, the other major moment that was broadcast across primetime and just as we were coming, you know, as I was coming out of my digital detox interview.

was Tom Cruise rappelling from the roof at the Stade de France in this transition from Paris Olympics to what will be the LA Olympics in 2028. And my friend Ian Ferguson wrote me after that moment saying, honestly, Naima, the next mixed signal should be about why the capital M media makes everything so miserable when in fact America rules. Do you think that's fair? I think that's a great point, Ian, and thank you so much for writing in. Yes, actually. And I think

I mean, I think, like, more broadly, when there's a big argument about that with the media, there was some story recently that said, you know, inflation hits new lows, but the U.S. faces some new terrible economic problem, which is no doubt true. But generally, there is this gap between all the gloom and doom and a lot of indicators, primarily the Tom Cruise index that are pointing up. Yes, the Tom Cruise index.

Unless it's Scientology, in which case the Tom Cruise index tends to be down, right? You know, we were just talking about defamation on podcasts before, so keep going, Naima. Oh, no. I hear they're litigious. Oh, gosh. Okay, I don't want to go there. That is true. I think, actually, this summer is the summer of, like, it's not the doom scroll, it's the boom scroll. Oh, what's that? I don't know. It's like a positive. I'm trying to coin it. Do you think I could coin that term, the boom scroll? Yeah.

Didn't he feel positive? I feel like we'll get some great emails about that. No. Do you think it will last, though? It's like in liberal circles, the complimentum is up. Kamala is laughing and, you know, Americans are winning. And do you see that four by 100 meter race where the women look like AI, they're running so fast? I think that for liberals and Democrats, the Olympics felt continuous with Kamala Harris. But, you know, that's a different kind of split screen. It totally depends on your feed, I think. Yeah. And, you know,

you know, conservatives hearing this are just enraged at the fact that the media thinks that these are one and the same when in fact Kamala is, you know, imposing price controls and turning us into Venezuela. Anyway. Another global celebrity, Pen,

Paying a lot of attention to social media seems to be the Ayatollah Khomeini. That's true. Yes, right ending our digital detox, we found out some big news this Saturday about these hacks, specifically an apparent state-sponsored attack on the Trump campaign that the former president is saying was an Iranian attack. He got it up there on Truth Social. He truthed it. He said, quote, we were just informed by Microsoft Corporation that one of our many websites was hacked by the Iranian government. Never a nice thing to do.

said Donald Trump. A rare Trump understatement.

Microsoft did report an Iranian hack against an unnamed presidential campaign, although a number of outlets have confirmed that it was a former senior Trump aide who was the target. Roger Stone, yeah. Yeah, the Iranians deny the hack, but the biggest story in some sense is the alleged Iranian attack on a presidential campaign. And they've got good reason, I think, in some ways, or they think they do. And of course, there's some history to all of this. Earlier this summer, it was reported that the Iranians were looking to assassinate President Trump.

There's no suggestion to date that this was connected to the actual attempted assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. But there's a feud here that goes back some time. In 2018, of course, President Trump pulled out of the Iranian nuclear deal. In 2020, under his watch, there was the assassination of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani. So a lot of history here, though the Iranians deny this hack.

And the FBI has yet to confirm it. And the Bureau is in the midst of investigating hacking allegedly by the Iranians targeting both the Democrats and the Republicans. So we want to do three different things here. This is our order of operation. So first, let's talk about this hack on the campaign. What is known? What's not known? Why much to the chagrin of many Democrats, the actual documents from this hack are not being covered. And in that, the second thing, we want to compare it to 2016 WikiLeaks where there was

kind of feeding frenzy around the Russian hacks of the DNC and Hillary emails. And I think you had a front row seat to that one. Yeah, no, I mean, I've been having a lot of very intense conversations with people about this over the last few days. Yes, deadline, Ben. And then we'll bring on a Democratic operative who's been in the middle of a couple of these hacks. And

Get a perspective from the kind of eye of the storm. But first, Ben, maybe just set the stage on what came to light on Saturday and in the days since this, you know, apparent state-sponsored hack of the Trump campaign. Yeah, well, this began when Politico reported that they had gotten documents from somebody calling themselves Robert with some Trump campaign documents, including a opposition research book about J.D. Vance.

and some emails didn't really characterize any of them. One thing we should actually say is at some point Politico asks, like, hey, where did you get these documents to this AOL account from Robert? The person writes back, quote, I suggest you don't be curious about where I got them from. Any answer to this question will compromise me and also legally restricts you from publishing them. I mean, that guy should teach a journalism school class, that Iranian intelligence operative.

Incredible. So Politico then reaches out to the Trump campaign to find out, you know, what's happening here? Are these documents real, et cetera? And that's when the Trump campaign just kind of responds in saying, yes, we were hacked and links to this report from Microsoft. And then it comes to light that New York Times, Washington Post also had these documents and also had made a decision not to publish. So this is what's going on.

Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Chung said, quote,

Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America's enemies and doing exactly what they want. Yeah, and I think that's where a number of Democrats lost their minds. Yes. Because Trump was WikiLeaks' biggest fan and biggest cheerleader when they were distributing leaked DNC emails to hurt the Clinton campaign in 2016. Trump said, I love WikiLeaks. He said, Russia, if you're listening... Russia, if you're listening...

I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.

So I think particularly people who were victims of that 2016 hack were just unbelievably furious about it. Right. And then, of course, here's the Trump campaign. Here's this in the spokesman statement. He's like, one, taking another victory lap for the assassination of Qasem Soleimani. And two, you know, effectively putting a bit of a gag order on the press, which is like if you're patriotic, right?

And that's not the reason why the press has been silent. The press has been silent in many ways because they believe it's more newsworthy to talk about the hacks than it is to talk about the details of these documents. But it's a huge flip from 2016. And then you waded into this on Twitter. Can you read the tweet?

Yeah, I wrote that hopefully, seriously, the Trump campaign will benefit from what the media learned in 2016 when it got played by state-sponsored hackers into publishing a drip-drip of Clinton information on the hackers' schedule. Which is to say, journalists can and should report seriously on real documents that shed light on real stories, but should also foreground the hackers' motives and not publish personal information gratuitously.

And in general, not treat a drip-drip of random documents as hot scoops. A bunch of really hard journalistic calls coming up. So this is like Deadline Ben just becoming so sober. Yeah, people were making fun of me for that. I mean, I think, you know, the rich, rich irony here is the media...

Because back in 2016, just to set the stage, in July of 2016, there were 19,000 emails leaked from a Russian hack of the DNC.

just days before the Democratic National Convention. And there's fundraising details, there's claims of bias against Bernie Sanders, all of which led to the resignation of then-DNC chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. At this time in that summer, Julian Assange told Megyn Kelly something, that they had thousands more emails and they were working on verifying them. And he says this. We have a lot of pages of material, thousands of pages of material. So I think it's significant that,

You know, it depends on how it catches fire in the public and in the media. And it really caught fire in the public and the media. And then in October of that same year, of 2016, they start having actual emails from the campaign itself, the Hillary Clinton campaign, after John Podesta fell prey to this phishing attack. So, Ben, you were the editor-in-chief at BuzzFeed at the time, and you reported on these emails, right, eagerly?

Yeah, you know, I mean, I remember it vividly. And I would say looking back, like, we probably I would give us like a B minus in terms of how we handled it. Like, I don't think we were totally self aware, but we also weren't totally unhinged. We published maybe a dozen stories total over several months. Yeah.

But I do remember that first meeting where we said, wow, obviously the biggest story here is the Russian attack on the Clinton campaign. Like that's a historically obviously much bigger story than – you know, it's funny. It's a little hard to remember what the huge WikiLeaks scoops were. The biggest was that the Democratic National Committee, you're going to be shocked to find, was biased in favor of the establishment candidate Hillary Clinton. And this was something everyone knew.

There's only one thing that we thought was, okay, you know what, this is legitimately just a piece of scoop, a piece of news that is worth getting out, which was that Clinton had been trying to keep secret the content of speeches she gave to organizations like Goldman Sachs. Yes, the Wall Street of it all. And some of that was in there. Yeah. And that seemed...

And just like – I mean at some level you just have to apply your news judgment and that's legitimate news. But the thing when I look back that was happening and I think we did some and that others did more was people were like, oh my god, like I have a scoop. I found this mildly interesting document in WikiLeaks and really it's like, no, no, you don't have a scoop.

The Russian government got the scoop. And if you think it's like the kind of story that's important enough that you should pick it up from Sputnik.com and reprint it, like fine. But don't like think that this is your reporting. And I think that's actually my sort of explanation to my sort of scoop-hungry self for why – like that's not my scoop. That's the GRU's scoop. Yeah.

Right. And so that's how you see it now. But a lot of it also was gossip, actually. Like, oh, this person's made this gaffe. This person said this thing. This person looks like an idiot. This person's out of touch. A lot of it was kind of gossip. And just like months later, I think there was the hack of Macron in France, and you didn't see this happen before.

in part because of the structure of the electoral system in France, which is multiple rounds, so you don't really know who's going to be hacked. And then the second reason is because they just don't have the kind of tabloid tradition, I think, of the Anglo media, like the American and English media. Yeah, it's a more closed system. They just sort of closed ranks and were like, we're not going to play this game, which that, you know, has its own problems too. Yeah. But here's the thing. So Jesse Isinger from ProPublica, when you came to this, you know, this moment of enlightenment, not in 2016, but in 2024,

Jesse Einzinger, editor of ProPublica, he made this argument that source motivation shouldn't matter when it comes to reporting on information. The newsworthiness matters. And you actually made a similar point when we were discussing the failure to report on the Hunter Biden stuff in 2020. You were saying, you know, the media was so obsessed with how they were being played and used.

that they didn't report. So just square that for me, square that circle for me. Oh, yeah. Well, A, I mean, obviously, Jesse is totally wrong. I don't even know what he's objecting to. But no, I mean, the source motivation matters when the source motivation is itself the biggest story in the world, right? And I think, in fact, maybe not the biggest story in the world, but a concerted Iranian government effort to take out one of the two presidential candidates in the United States, like,

That's a really big, interesting story. Yeah. A document full of like the worst J.D. Vance quotes is something you can find on 10 websites right now. And it's kind of mildly entertaining that the Trump campaign has one and was looking at it. Like, sure. But that's not a story on the same level. And so I do agree, though. I don't have the document.

Yeah. Some of us did not get the documents. The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Politico. And, you know, that's either because, you know, we aren't as widely read in Tehran as obviously we should be, or if you'd like my conspiracy theory, because we have published one huge story based on hacked and leaked documents from people whose motives we genuinely do not know.

which was a huge cache of leaked Iranian government documents about interfering in U.S. politics. And so maybe we're not the first read of, you know, Air Force One and –

Yes. A lot of people, Ben, were kind of shocked at Deadline Ben for writing this. Neera Tanden, who featured heavily in the 2016 WikiLeaks, kind of retweeted you saying, OMG. And did you talk to Neera? You know, I texted Neera. I asked her if she wanted to come on here. She declined to participate in this, quote, entirely gross episode. She said entirely gross? Yeah.

I mean, she has good reason to be mad, I think, actually. And I remember I interviewed her in 16 after the hack, asked her maybe a couple more questions than she expected about...

You know what? In retrospect, not the biggest deal in the world. I can't remember if she actually gave me the finger on stage, but I think she may have. But that was her general point of view on it at the time, which I think – and I think it's not exactly that they say – that these Democrats are saying, you know what? The media should be equally responsible this time around. But I think they are saying that editors – I would say particularly at places like Politico and The New York Times –

Ought to say, hey, actually, we're sorry we got that wrong. We have now changed what we're doing and this is different. There was never any reckoning with or apology for what was obviously a huge screw up, I think, in retrospect in terms of not responsibly publishing some elements of the leaks.

but allowing Julian Assange to be the editor-in-chief of a bunch of Western places. Well, that's the thing. It was also coming through WikiLeaks, which was a little bit different than kind of coming from an AOL email from Robert, right? WikiLeaks had its own process of verifying documents, etc. It was a more dexterous way for the Russian intelligence operation to leak documents than, you know, AOL accounts. But I'm sure the Iranians will figure it out. The Iranian shortcut. But at some point, like, these documents are going to make their way down the...

the food chain a little bit. Like there have been it to New York Times, Washington Post, Politico. But at some point it will get to this, like, you know, someone will blog it and then news organizations will cover it with the fury, adding the context of this is part of the hack. I'm not sure they will. It really does depend on whether it's interesting. I mean, I think

There's a lot of different moving pieces. I mean, one of those moving pieces is that people on presidential campaigns don't put interesting stuff in email anymore. It's all on Signal. Things have changed since 2016. People have become more circumspect. And again, they learned this lesson at Hillary Clinton's expense. And also, by the way, like there's so much that has been said by Donald Trump on Truth Social, etc. You could say that, you know, particularly in 2016 and 2016.

maybe even now, the light between what the Democrats present and what the Democrats say in private is a little further than what Donald Trump says in public and says in private. Yeah, it's part of this broader problem of covering Donald Trump, which Jonathan Shait wrote about recently, which is he'll just say crazy outrageous stuff all the time. And so he sort of wears down people's judgment of what's newsworthy and operates totally outside the standards that every other politician of both parties held to. But...

You also were the editor-in-chief who published the Steele dossier in 2017, in January of 2017. You know, a lot of news organizations were just alluding to it. Jake Tapper was on CNN just talking about these documents, which hadn't been verified. The Steele dossier was since discredited. You have defended your decision to publish it. And one thing you've kind of consistently talked about is that

You'd said that not publishing it produced speculation that's darker than reality. Do you remember this? Yeah. And so I guess the question is, if that's true, is not publishing the emails now helping Kamala Harris in some way? Because what people can imagine is in these leaked documents is darker than what's actually in these leaked documents? I don't observe that happening, right? But I do think you could imagine a situation in which Kamala Harris got on stage and said,

those leaked documents reveal that Donald Trump and his Illuminati cabal are doing X, Y, and Z, in which the logic of releasing the documents might change, right? I mean, right, these are complicated cases that do depend a lot on the environment around them. In the case of the Steele dossier, it had been briefed to and taken seriously by two presidents of the United States and by the FBI director and the intelligence community. And

a bunch of the U.S. Senate and was sort of influencing their actions. It was like a major piece of dark matter in Washington, which I don't really think these things are. Yeah. I know you stand by the decision to publish the dossier, but it sent many liberal news readers into a kind of like Pizzagate tailspin. They were already in the Pizzagate tailspin, but it accelerated it for sure. It accelerates it. Ultimately, do you think that that decision, like these kinds of decisions do more to discredit the quote mainstream media and its readers than to protect its ethics? And do you think that

That also weighs into the decisions that news organizations are making now and your own perspective on it.

I mean, I think, and this is a very annoying way to think, I think it's incredibly hard to predict the consequences of publishing or not publishing things. And if you start making those judgments based on how you think the billiard ball is going to hit three different other billiard balls, you get totally lost. And so I tend not to think about that stuff. Yeah, which is why a lot of the default is just to publish. Yeah, for sure. And in a world where there's so much misinformation, influencers peddling information as journalism, some of it is also like this, is this...

does this matter? Is it just intellectual masturbation amongst kind of elite publishers? Does this process even matter? And I think like if in either case, the media is going to get blamed. Like if Trump wins, Kamala will blame the media. If Kamala Harris wins, Trump is going to blame the media or maybe he's going to blame Vance. But I feel like the media is going to lose despite being on its high horse at this moment. You know, that's, I mean, that is one eternal truth, at least that the people always blame the media when they're unhappy. But, uh,

But in fact, our ability to influence the situation wanes every time around. That's true. So let's take a quick break and we'll be back with Christina Reynolds, the Democratic operative, to talk about what it was like being in the midst of these hacks in 2016.

This week on our branded segment from Think with Google, we're talking with Google VP of Marketing Josh Spanier about marketing and about the one thing you can believe in: the Olympics. It's Olympics time. I've been seeing Google showing up within the NBC broadcast. I suspect you are doing a lot of buying there. What is the ambition with the Olympics for you? So the Olympics is the biggest cultural moment of the year. And let's just talk a minute about how big it is for NBC.

NBC owes the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, a billion dollars this year and every year through 2032 for the rights to broadcast the games in the United States. That is a remarkably large amount of money. And they have to pay for it or historically paid for it by running ads that we are all forced to sit through.

The reason why now you are seeing Kelly Clarkson and Snoop Dogg all over NBC's coverage, and the reason why you're seeing it across every platform they own, including Peacock and all their cable channels, is NBC is trying to remind us all, involve us all, as many different ways as possible that the Olympics matters. The Olympics is important so they can keep monetizing and actually get value out of this deal.

For us as a marketing organization, at every major marketing organization, the Olympics is this epic moment in culture. It's a moment where we can engage with our customers and actually do things in partnership with NBC, activating around athletes in the city of Paris to showcase, in our case, Google Maps and AI summaries to actually engage with our customers. So we need NBC to be successful in making the game successful, and we want to use it as a platform to actually engage with our overall customers.

The most important thing for us long-term is not just that we show up well at these Olympic Games, but that we integrate what we're doing in the Games as part of our long-term sort of annual and multi-year marketing program. So the Games don't just come and go as a two-week spike, but actually a part of a larger marketing program through the year. All right, our guest is Christina Reynolds. Besides being someone whose name will pop up in a search of the 2016 WikiLeaks treasure trove, explain who she has been.

Yeah, Christina is a veteran, low-profile, Democratic operative, low-profile because her specialty is opposition research. It's a profession that makes you a great source to journalists and well-known to the media and...

means that you have to really understand how the media works because, you know, before the Russians were handing out leaks, Kristina and people like her were the ones trying to get reporters to write about their enemies. So low profile, but certainly not low position. She's someone who's held some very high and influential positions across democratic politics in the last decades, in addition to being the deputy

D. Combs director for Hillary for America, the Hillary campaign in 2016, and running Oppo Research, as you said. She had a long career as the White House director of media affairs under Obama, the director of rapid response for the Obama campaign. She worked at the DCCC during the 06 midterms, and someone who has actually been in the center of hacks, not just with Hillary Clinton, but also in 2014 with Sony. Incredible bad luck, really. From Moscow to Pyongyang. But a perfect person for us to talk to this week, so let's bring her on.

Hi, Christina. Thanks for being with us today. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm trying to think. I think we met when you were running opposition research for the John Edwards campaign for president. Is that possible? That's right. One of two, yes. I can't remember what, like, the best Chris Dodd hit you ever gave me was, but I'm sure you were a great source back in the day. I tried. I tried. I guess just to sort of set the stage here, we've been talking about covering the hacks and leaks of 2016. Yeah.

And I guess I wondered if you could just begin by telling us what it felt like from the inside. When did you realize that your emails were on the internet?

Um, I admittedly have blocked some of this out. So it was, it was a terrible feeling. I mean, the truth is, you know, you are working on a campaign, you're doing something because you believe in it, and because you believe it's important. And you believe that, you know, your your work is

And you need to be able to do that and to focus on that. And then there's this thing swirling. And, you know, we use email. I mean, think about how many times you drop an email and you don't even think about what you've said in there.

And to think about that being made public, which comes at, you know, was I having an off day? Was I just being, you know, a little snarky, which I have a tendency to be sarcastic and snarky. How's that going to read without any context? It's...

It messes with your brain a little bit. It messes with your focus. It puts out things that can be embarrassing or can be detrimental to the candidate. And so anything that did damage to the candidate also...

makes you feel like you're not meeting your goals. You're not there for the, you know, you're not doing things that get you to the thing that you want to do, which in our case was electing Hillary Clinton, and not for nothing, but stopping Donald Trump. But I think there was, and I know I sound like Pollyanna when I say this, but there was a desire to just keep things moving and

towards the election. And so we'll deal with that later. And then the election happened, and we dealt with other things, you know. And so I didn't go back and read it. And I didn't read it in real time. So, you know, it's a, it's a little bit of a black box for me that I know is probably unfortunate, but, you know, makes me feel better. Yeah.

You talk about kind of wanting to stay focused on the election. Do you feel like the media did that? No. No, not at all. So were you surprised? What do you think of the way the media handled the hack back in 2016, including our present company, Ben Smith? I will say I don't remember exact specifics of who covered what and things like that. I, you know...

There was a lot that I found challenging in the way the media covered Hillary, covered the email situation, covered Trump. There was a lot that we found frustrating. And so was I surprised? Not really. Be a little more specific. Like, what did you, what do you mean? Sure. And you feel free to be angry. Yeah, yeah. I, um...

It's there. We were very frustrated with the focus on emails. And not to say that it doesn't matter. I get it. It matters. But the beating of that drum lasted so long when there was no new information, when there was...

at the end of the day, not proof that she had actually jeopardized, that security had been breached in a way that was dangerous for the United States. The emails turned out to be a nothing burger. I mean, you got good tips from John Podesta on risotto, right? But there was very little there that was actually of interest. And what I understand there's news value. My challenge with it was

that news value dissipated at a point, and then where were we? And, you know, I understand the media covers what's interesting and to some degree covers what the public is interested in, but I would argue the public is also interested in what you show them. Just to dig in a little, like one of the things which I suspect kind of was a

bouncing around some element of the people you worked with was the secret speeches. The Clinton had given these secret speeches. The Russians basically had obtained them and dumped them the moment Donald Trump had this Access Hollywood tape. You know, what do you want me, sort of what do you expect me to do there as a journalist? Like these are secret documents we've been looking for and okay, the Russians are not our friends and have bad motives, but isn't that news? Like what do you want from me in that situation?

Well, I mean, look, do I think it's a challenge to figure that out? Yes. And I'm not sure I view – I think there's questions of are we being unwittingly used as a pawn. I mean, Ben, you mentioned that I was an opposition researcher and I used to drop oppo. Yeah, it was your pawn. Right, that's right. And that's what we do. And if the facts are there, then the facts are there. And I understand that.

I don't have all the answers and I'm not an ombudswoman, I suppose. There's the question of if you get something illegally, does it matter? I mean, then you get back to the Pentagon Papers and all of that. I went to journalism school. I understand some of the challenges there. I don't have exactly the answer on what I expect you to do, but I would love to see some consistency.

That's something that I do think matters. And speaking of that, let's switch gears to the Trump hack. Sure. What did you think? What was your sort of immediate reaction when you learned of it? Honestly, my immediate reaction is, is it actually a hack?

Um, I think from a campaign that has proven very willing to, and a candidate that has proven very willing to lie, do we have proof that this was a hack and not someone leaking? Um, I don't know. Um, you know, and then the question is, is it newsworthy? And the fact that, that it, it would appear to me that the media is saying, well, if it's a hack, it's it, we can't use it.

is a very different standard than what was used in 2016. Yeah, how do you feel about that? I wish that my candidate and my colleagues and I were not the ones that the media got to, you know,

figure out lessons on. That's, you know, I think a part of the frustration was it was used to paint a picture of the campaign and of the operation that Hillary ran, right? That was unfair, that we did leak all the time, that we, you know, that all of these things and that there were all these things happening. And the news that people got in the emails was that sometimes campaign people

have little battles for power. Sometimes campaign people don't like each other. Sometimes they are snippy with each other. That's not breaking news. It is true of every single campaign I've worked on, and I've spent 25 years in campaigns. It's true of every workplace. I mean, that's just life, but especially campaigns and as high pressure as they are. And the fact that it became news is really frustrating. I do think that may be different than a vetting report.

Now, I also think the media, one thing we don't want to encourage is that campaigns are just constantly under assault from hackers who have gotten significantly more sophisticated. So I don't think it's easy. Just like I don't think it's easy on how you deal with Donald Trump as the media. But I think we should be asking the questions of how it works. I'm glad you all are doing this. Do you think that these media outlets, that we owe you guys at least an apology if we're going to come in and change the rules now? No.

or some reckoning? I do think there could be a little more reckoning in the media of how some things went down. I don't think we're owed an apology.

I believe the media is an incredibly important part of our society, of holding people accountable, of all of those things. I very much believe in the media, and I think they have to get it right. And I think that there's not enough looking back to say we got this right or we didn't.

The loss of media reporters, the loss of ombudsmen is a challenge. We don't have enough of that. More media reporters. That's what we need. Well, the world needs more media accountability. It has that. Yeah. This wasn't your first hack experience. It was not. It was not. I was in the Sony hack. Yes. Yeah. That was 2014. Yeah.

Yeah, I believe that's right. Again, they all blend together at some level. So that was the North Korean attack on Sony where a lot of executive emails were leaked. Your communications with some executives were leaked in a communications capacity, correct? Yes, yes. And they were, mine were very nothing burgers. But yes, I feel a little unlucky. Yeah. How do you compare that?

It's a good question. I mean, I do think Hollywood is, and particularly the Hollywood media, is...

was, I would argue, more focused on gossip, more focused on the sort of inner deal-making, right? The sausage-making, so to speak, that was in those emails was newsy because who makes a deal is newsy. And so there was, I think, no question and certainly no navel-gazing on were those things news?

Yeah, you think the political media doesn't like self-reflection. Just go to Hollywood. Sure, sure. Yes. There was also this chilling effect in Hollywood after that. Like I remember because I make documentaries as well in 2015, we're pitching a documentary around Putin.

And we got a lot of feedback, and in particular, a very senior executive running one of the major companies said to us, you know, there's no way we're going to touch this right now after Sony. No way. And so there was this chilling effect on the kind of stories that could be told in media. Do you think there has been any kind of chilling effect of the 2016 hacks? Yeah.

Well, it chilled whatever came out of the Trump hack, right? No, not in the same way, I would argue. But I do think it – I mean, and it's why, like, I hope that we actually know this was a hack because it's an easy way to say that wasn't a leak, that was a hack, you can't use it, right? If that's going to be the standard that the media is going to have, then it feels like a get-out-of-jail-free card, so to speak. Yeah.

Yeah, that's really interesting. It's sort of like this extension of the whole maybe it's a deep fake. Who knows? I think about that with the Access Hollywood tape all the time. If that came out now, he would say, anybody would say, I'm not sure that's authentic. That's a deep fake. And honestly, how would we know? It's a really interesting question. That's a fair point. And then they would not have needed to hack you and dump all your emails. So there's our solution. Yeah.

If you can't believe in anything being real, you don't need to hack anybody. Well, we'll see as this FBI investigation continues, you know, right now. But between the Microsoft reports, the kind of reporting that's being done by news organizations, the statements, the fact that there was an attempt on the Biden-Harris campaign earlier this year as well, signs point to. Take off your tinfoil hat, Christina. Yeah, I should note.

I have no proof that it's not true. I'm just saying let's not take things at face value given the messenger. Well, we'll see what happens at this FBI investigation. Thank you so much, Christina, for joining us. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Christina. It's good to see you.

There was a moment where that felt really conspiratorial, like the did the hacks even happen conversation. You know, I mean, I actually thought that was a great point. It did not encourage me, but that is another way to throw smoke into the air is to say you can't – if we, the media, make a rule saying you can't touch ill-begotten documents, of course campaigns, kind of as the Biden campaign did with the Hunter laptop, will say –

Without justification in that case, this is hacked, don't touch it. I don't think she was really suggesting, and I don't think she's right, that these Trump things weren't hacked. That is really true. There is a kind of what in the tech world you'd call a liar's dividend in this world of misinformation, deep fakes, etc., where if everything can be dismissed as it's not true, then nothing becomes true anymore. Every single piece of information used against you, that's not true.

Yeah, it's not true, or it's out of bounds. Yeah. Yeah, it's just another layer of haze in this media environment. Yeah, but again, this gets into, like, gaming what people want out of you, right? Like, so it's like, oh, did they want to shut you up? Who has what agenda here? And you're all of a sudden, you're just like a spinning compass a little bit. Yeah, and if you're a political person who's thinking about politics all day, as Christina is, you're also thinking, where's the edge here? Where's the, like, what's the... She didn't really follow. She didn't go all the way down the road, but of course...

You could imagine where that conversation leads is a very intense campaign from the Kamala Harris people saying, this wasn't hacked. How do you know it was hacked? Why are you predicting Donald Trump? He's a liar. He claims it's hacked. Why do you believe him? I mean, you could sort of see her testing out that thread. And it's interesting. You think we were being used as guinea pigs to test that messaging? Yeah.

I think it comes naturally. We should mention, Christina does not work for the Harris campaign, but you might be. That's interesting, Ben. She was just making an interesting point. You can't even do an interview without thinking about your sources, motivations, and how you're being used, Ben. I've been in that relationship with Christina for a long time. We're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back.

Modern Marketers is a new podcast from Think with Google, featuring Google marketing veterans Josh Spanier, who you know from this show, and Bethany Poole. They chat with some of the biggest names in their industry, the people behind the campaigns that really leave a mark. They get into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to launch great creative, take calculated risks, and stay relevant in the ever-changing world of marketing. You'll learn a ton about leadership, making tough calls, and how to shake things up within your company.

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All right, time for Blind Spots. Max Tani is not here, but we have our amazing producer, Allison Rogers. Allie, hi, Allie. Hi, guys. Thanks for having me on. It's exciting to have you in front of the scenes. I know, I know. I'm stepping from out behind the curtain. I'm concerned that your blind spot will be too insane. We'll see. I will say many of my pitches were rejected early this morning. Various pitches shot down one by one.

Okay, but I do have a blind spot, and it is Olympics related. And this blind spot is that actually breakdancing at the Olympics was extremely cool and athletic, but that has been overshadowed by Ray Gunn. Do you guys know who Ray Gunn is? I've seen the videos but don't totally understand, but it is definitely true that the only breakdancing I've seen has been this Australian woman not breakdancing.

Just rolling around on the floor. Yeah. The one person who has just gotten all the media attention is an Australian woman named Rachel Gunn. But her breakdance name is Ray Gunn, just to be clear. And she's just not the best breakdancer. She did get to compete in the Olympics, but she's just gone really viral for having these really awkward, jerky movements. Yeah.

And also just being a PhD in cultural studies with a focus on the cultural politics of breaking. I think that's just a field day for comedy writers and aspiring comedians on Twitter. And so what is it actually? What are we missing? What does it look like?

Can you describe for us the actual breakdancing? The actual breakdancing is really good. Like, if you Google breakdancing Olympics, the results you're going to get are just going to be story after story about Raegon. Like, Raegon says stop bullying her. Raegon, oh, like, did she sneak her way into the Olympics? Why is she so bad? Yeah.

Is this cultural appropriation? What was this cultural appropriation? Is that her PhD thesis or is that a question we're asking? I think that's a question being asked, not her thesis. So this is the blind spot. In the midst of the hack, you're being distracted from the big story out of Paris, which is...

breakdancing. And breakdancing might be censored. I mean, this is a free expression thing, too. Like, it's not coming back in 2028. Yeah. So I encourage you to click around on this thing. This is the United States competitor B-Boy Victor, who got the bronze in breakdancing. Sorry, I'm seeing a 15-second ad. That's because NBC had a great Olympics, and here we are seeing 15-second ads. Yeah, I know. Yeah.

Here, okay, this is the... So, we're looking now. Oh. Oh. Whoa. Yes! Oh, wow. This is, like, fully, like, jumping, getting in the air. We're getting some serious... He's just kind of jumping around on his own head. Oh, come on.

Oh, yeah, right. One hand. Okay, this is a sport. This is like gymnastics, basically, right? Yeah, it's got similarities, I think, to floor gymnastics. Oh, my God. The one-arm thing, though. I mean, he's just like spinning around on one arm. Incredible. Yeah. This is a floor routine. This is a genuine blind spot for me. This is amazing. This is a genuine blind spot because everyone now has this image of breakdancing, which is just Ray Gunn doing a kind of weird, people are calling it like a kangaroo move thing.

And, which is maybe anti-Australian. I'm not sure. No, this is an anti-Australian podcast. It's okay. Basically, yeah. My blind spot is that breakdancing at the Olympics was actually extremely cool and good. And we should all take some time to wade through the results of Ray Gunn and get to some of the other competitors. We can put this link in the show notes. This is, in fact, amazing. Thank you, Allie. See, you made it after all your pitches were rejected for what I'm sure was ageism, Allie.

I know. You can't be ageist against the young. Yeah, you have to be over 40 to be protected. That's a lot. Is that true? Something to look forward to. And then I'll just leave you guys with this that...

LA, their sport that they're choosing is going to be flag football. So 2028. Oh, come on. Flag football. See, I heard fly and I was so excited for Ben. I thought you were going to say fly fishing. And I thought Ben was going to be an Olympian. No such luck. No, he's just going to remain a journalist. All right, Ali, thank you so much for joining us and giving us this very important blind spot. Also, by the way, flag football is not going to be like this. Bad move from LA. Sorry. Go ahead, Ben. No, I'm just, I'm entranced. I'm still just watching. Sorry.

Are you really just watching still? I'm just watching the other guys back on standing on his head again. Ben! It's amazing. Weren't we talking about not being distracted on our podcast? This was bait, though. This was. All right. Ben, you keep watching this. Just keeping you up to date.

Thanks for listening to Mixed Signals from Semaphore Media. Our show is produced by Max Tani, Allison Rogers, Alan Haberchak, Sheena Azaki, Andrea Lopez-Cresado, with important breakdancing updates continuing from Ben Smith of Semaphore Media. Special thanks to Brittica Lannis, Chad Lewis, Rachel Oppenheim, Anna Pizzino, Garrett Wiley, and Jewel Zurn. Our engineer is Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Billy Libby. And our public editor is Robert.

and his AOL account. That should have been the first tip. Keeping close tabs on us. If you like Mixed Signals, please follow us wherever you get your podcasts and feel free to review us. And if you're watching on YouTube, give us a like and subscribe to Semaphore's channel. And if that's not enough, you can always sign up for Semaphore's media newsletter out every Sunday night.