Journalists under attack as the information war reaches new heights

A number of prominent media journalists claim they are receiving eerie warnings from information gatekeeper Google about attempted hacking attempts on their email accounts. Reports indicate that the presumed attacks appear to be originating from government-backed hackers, possibly to silence honest journalism as the information war reaches a whole new level of intensity.

One such journalist, Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine, told Politico recently that he started receiving warnings from Google almost immediately after the surprising November 8 election. Since that time, Chait, has received numerous additional warnings from Google, including one that popped up across the top of his email screen just two or three weeks ago.

Julia Ioffe of The Atlantic says she, too, has received warnings from Google about attempted hacking of her email accounts. Having only recently just started at the magazine, Ioffe is somewhat bewildered by these potential attacks, though they may not be all that out of the ordinary since for the past several years she has covered all sorts of topics relating to Russia, a hot-button issue in today’s tumultuous political climate.

Though it cannot be said for sure, at this point, who is doing the attempted hacking and for what purpose, some of those being targeted believe there might be a strong political element at play. Jumping on the “Russians!” bandwagon, these individuals fear that the Kremlin might be trying to expose incriminating emails in order to embarrass them, or to reveal strong liberal bias and criticisms of the president.

“The fact that all this started right after the election suggests to me that journalists are the next wave to be targeted by state-sponsored hackers in the way that Democrats were during it,” one journalist who received a warning from Google told Politico, which is aggressively probing the issue looking for answers. (RELATED: More information on fake news is available at Propaganda.news)

“I worry that the outcome is going to be the same: Someone, somewhere, is going to get hacked, and then the contents of their Gmail will be weaponized against them — and by extension all media.”

Google admits that hacking isn’t necessarily happening, and that warnings are purely for ‘caution’

Journalists at CNN, GQ, Vox News, and many other news outlets all claim they are receiving warnings from Google pop-ups in their Gmail inboxes about possible government hacking, which is obviously creating a stir throughout the media. But Google has already admitted that no attacks have actually happened. Even the warnings themselves say that Google “may” have detected such activity in users’ accounts.

What this suggests is that Google may (to use its own verbiage) simply be trying to scare journalists into thinking that President Trump and/or the Russians are trying to stifle their free speech. Such a tactic is hardly beyond the pale, considering the lengths to which the media and certain multi-national corporations have already gone to try to try to smear the president.

“Since 2012, we’ve notified users when we believe their Google accounts are being targeted by government-backed attackers,” a Google spokesperson admitted in a statement.

“We send these warnings out of an abundance of caution — they do not indicate that a user’s account has already been compromised or that a more widespread attack is occurring when they receive the notice.”

If such attacks have supposedly been attempted prior to the 2016 election of Donald Trump, then why is the world only just now hearing about this? Politics as usual, it seems — which is not to say that hacking is no big deal, or that it is not occurring, but rather that it is being politicized to push a nefarious agenda.

Sources for this article include:

Politico.com

TheWrap.com