CNN Sets Disturbing Precedent By Threatening To Dox Reddit User After Posting Trump-CNN Wrestling Me
A CNN article posted on July 4th and written by Andrew Kaczynski essentially bragged about finding out the identity of Reddit user "HanA**holeSolo" who shared an edited wrestling video of President Donald Trump tackling and punching a man with the "CNN" logo attached to his face.
This video was later tweeted by the POTUS himself, which stirred up much controversy:
The Reddit user has since made a lengthy apology and deleted his account:
"First of all, I would like to apologize to the members of the reddit community for getting this site and this sub embroiled in a controversy that should never have happened," he wrote. "I would also like to apologize for the posts made that were racist, bigoted, and anti-semitic. I am in no way this kind of person, I love and accept people of all walks of life and have done so for my entire life. I am not the person that the media portrays me to be in real life, I was trolling and posting things to get a reaction from the subs on reddit and never meant any of the hateful things I said in those posts. I would never support any kind of violence or actions against others simply for what they believe in, their religion, or the lifestyle they choose to have. Nor would I carry out any violence against anyone based upon that or support anyone who did. "The meme was created purely as satire, it was not meant to be a call to violence against CNN or any other news affiliation," he wrote. "I had no idea anyone would take it and put sound to it and then have it put up on the President's Twitter feed. It was a prank, nothing more. What the President's feed showed was not the original post that was posted here, but loaded up somewhere else and sound added to it then sent out on Twitter. I thought it was the original post that was made and that is why I took credit for it. I have the highest respect for the journalist community and they put their lives on the line every day with the jobs that they do in reporting the news."
The CNN article itself has been edited after being SEVERELY criticized on social media and internet message boards.
Just recently, an anonymous poster on 4chan claimed to be the original creator of the Trump-CNN wrestling meme, which dates back to January 12, 2017. He is allegedly from Mexico and is not worried about revealing his identity.
This may present an interesting conundrum: If anyone is to be criticized, should it be the content creator or the Reddit user who just so happened to garner the attention of the POTUS? Or, should CNN not have so aggressively gone after such a trivial issue, as it may lead to legal consequences down the road:
21st century journalism seems to be spiraling out of control at an alarming rate; hopefully we, as a nation, can get back on track and practice a bit more decorum.
