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#CNNBlackmail: CNN News Reporter Andrew Kaczynski’s Tweets About Privacy Discovered, Twitter Cries Hypocrisy

By Perri Fisher
Published on: 15:58 PST, Jul 5, 2017

As #CNNBlackmail continues to trend on Twitter, another wrinkle to this story emerges: CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski’s tweets on privacy. Andrew Kaczynski, a reporter for CNN’s KFILE and author of the investigative piece “How CNN found the Reddit user behind the Trump wrestling GIF,” has been ruthlessly scrutinized by Twitter users who believe that Reddit user HanA**holeSolo, the man allegedly behind the viral Trump CNN wrestling video, is being blackmailed by Kaczynski and CNN into apologizing for his posts and limiting his future Reddit activity.

Tweets from Andrew Kaczynski dating back to 2012 reveal that his views on privacy may run contrary to his current treatment of Reddit user HanA**holeSolo. One tweet, in response to a tweet from Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former Director of Market Development for the social media giant, reads the following.

“Yeah, what kind of monsters would take people’s personal information and use it for another purpose. Oh Wait.”

The tweet may have been a jab at Randi’s brother Mark Zuckerberg regarding Facebook’s numerous privacy controversies. According to Time, Facebook is required to submit to periodic privacy audits from the Federal Trade Commission for 20 years because it “deceived consumers” regarding its privacy practices.

In another tweet, written on February 2 of this year, CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski references privacy again, this time claiming that individuals have a “right [to] privacy on blogging.”

This tweet is in response to a tweet written by Thomas C. Bowen, a self-described “media/campaign guy” who has worked on six political campaigns, including that of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, according to the website of Mac Strategies Group where Bowen is employed as a Senior Public Affairs Adviser. In his tweet, Bowen references a Twitter thread in which Kaczynski participated that discusses the ethics of exposing the identity of internet bloggers.

[Image by David McNew/Newsmakers/Getty Images]

The issue at hand was the exposure of the identity of an anonymous blogger named Publius Decius Mus, called “Decius” for short, in an article published by the Weekly Standard entitled, “The Anonymous Pro-Trump ‘Decius’ Now Works Inside The White House.” This article revealed “Decius” to be Michael Anton, a senior national security official for President Trump who formerly served in the George W. Bush administration.

Then-President-Elect Trump calls CNN “fake news” at a news conference on January 11 [Image by Evan Vucci/AP Images]

The tweet that inspired the debate was posted by Libertarian radio host Ben Domenech, who asked, “Is this really necessary given how many people knew who Decius was the instant they read his essay?” The debate, involving the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes and the America Rising PAC’s Tim Miller, was joined by Andrew Kaczynski, who stated that anonymous bloggers should be exposed “if they wrote things publicly and are now in positions of power.” But in his reply to Thomas C. Bowen’s remark on the thread, the CNN reporter stated

“I think you have a right [to] privacy on blogging if you’re not a senior official in the White House.”

To some, this raises an important question. If Andrew Kaczynski believes that private citizens who do not hold positions of power in the White House are entitled to a “right [to] privacy,” why did he track down the personal information of private citizen and Reddit user HanA**holeSolo? Some Twitter users see this apparent contraction in values between the CNN reporter’s tweets and his actions as a sign of hypocrisy.

This latest controversy for CNN occurs as activist James O’Keefe works on exposing CNN’s “fake news” in his Project Veritas videos which allegedly depict CNN producers espousing views that are at odds with CNN’s official narrative on issues such as the Russia-Trump collusion story, according to the Inquisitr. It remains to be seen what effect these new revelations on Andrew Kaczynski and #CNNBlackmail will have on the already-embattled CNN.

[Featured Image by ImageCatalog/Shutterstock]

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