French Media Puts US Press To Shame By Refusing To Cover Russia Macron Hack

The French press is showing the corporate US media how it should be done, as they have imposed a voluntary blackout on the Russian Macron campaign email hack until after the election.

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Via Google translate, this is the statement from the French newspaper Le Monde on the MacronLeaks emails:

Whatever the origin of the piracy, the publication of these documents two days before the second round, in the reserve period which forbids the candidates and their supporters to express themselves, is clearly aimed at disrupting the current electoral process.

Le Monde will not publish the contents of any of these documents until the second round. Firstly, because the volume of pirated documents – fifteen gigabytes of files – makes their analysis, cross-checks and checks that are necessary in any journalistic work, impossible to conduct within this time. Also, and most importantly, because these files were knowingly published 48 hours before the vote, with the obvious purpose of damaging the sincerity of the ballot, at a time when the main interested parties have the legal prohibition to answer any accusations.

If these documents contain revelations, Le Monde, of course, will publish them after having investigated, in accordance with our journalistic and ethical rules, without being instrumentalized by the calendar of publication of anonymous actors.

If the US media would have displayed the same level of professionalism and journalistic responsibility after the Clinton email hack, the US election might have turned out differently. Obviously, the MacronLeaks were released so close to the second round of voting with the intention of influencing the outcome of the election for Marine Le Pen.

The French media blackout on the Macron hack is real, and it is a roadmap for how the media can help to short circuit Russian acts of sabotage in Western elections.

Trump is president because Putin figured out how to exploit the laziness of cable news and their emphasis on profit over getting a story right. The American press can learn a lot from how their French colleagues have responded to the hack.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association