Talk:Podesta emails

PwnAllTheThings

103.223.8.97, TheTimesAreAChanging, MonsterHunter32: Discuss. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 23:29, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm not really involved in this thing. I only noticed the edit-warring between three editors while reading the article. And the reasons given by TheTimesAreAChanging was pretty nonsensical, "IP is not WP:RS". MonsterHunter32 (talk) 23:37, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

MonsterHunter32, is not constructive. Please stop edit warring and provide a policy-based reason for why this content belongs in the article. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 01:31, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

The material about metadata showing that the documents were last modified by "Felix Dzerzhinsky" is not directly related to the Podesta emails, but rather the DNC emails; the Vox source from August 2016 predates the former's October publication. In addition, there is nothing in the metadata to suggest that the actual contents of any of the DNC emails were altered, as is implied by including this information under "Authenticity." Simply put, MonsterHunter32 and the IP are struggling—and I mean really, truly struggling—with basic reading comprehension.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:53, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

I only reverted because your reasons were incomprehensible, "IP is not WP:RS". I don't have much to do here. Whatever your reasons, discuss it among yourselves. MonsterHunter32 (talk) 23:19, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

I was the one who added the material because the source says so. Timesareachanging keeps deleting the.. The hacks were carried out long before October. Also DNC emails leaked in July 2016. When someone hs modified the Russian in the documents to English it is definitely, "Modified". 117.225.17.187 (talk) 23:08, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Saw your claims IP. But I think you are confusing the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak with Podesta emails. MonsterHunter32 (talk) 23:21, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm sorry. I thought it was about Podesta emails. I'll remove it 117.199.88.238 (talk) 15:51, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Section on Brazile emails doesn't seem to fall within the scope of this article

The section titled, "Presidential debate questions shared by Donna Brazile" doesn't seem to fall within the scope of this article. Although the material covered in the section is notable and relevent to email leaks during the Clinton campaign, I don't see how it falls under the scope of this particular article, which is exclusively about emails from Podesta's account. Sparkie82 (t•c) 04:10, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

No, Podesta was cc'ed on all of the emails in question, and they were taken and released to WikiLeaks by whoever hacked his gmail account.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:06, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Can you please explain that in that section so it is clear that the leaked email came from Podesta's account? Thank you. Sparkie82 (t•c) 05:40, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Reorganized lede

I have reorganized the lede to begin by stating what happened (WikiLeaks published Podesta's emails, relating to Clinton's campaign), and then to discuss the origin of the emails and their authenticity. Previously, the lede launched straight into theories about the origin of the emails and their authenticity, before even defining what they were and why they were newsworthy. I think the new organization is much more logical, and will tell readers right up-front what the article is about. -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:14, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

What matters isn't newsworthiness, since we're not a newspaper, but rather long-term significance. There has been much more coverage of the hacking than the contents of the e-mails, especially since the 2016 election. Therefore I think the longstanding structure is much more appropriate. R2 (bleep) 00:36, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Which aspect of this has received more coverage is highly debatable. The Podesta emails are rarely mentioned in the Russiagate coverage, and my cursory search of news articles for "Podesta emails" shows coverage mostly of the contents of the emails. I'm happy to give a summary of these results, when I have a bit more time to put it together. In the meantime, can you actually point to evidence that the most notable aspect of the Podesta emails is the method in which they were obtained, rather than their contents (e.g., Donna Brazile sharing town hall questions, Clinton's Wall Street speeches, or dealings of the Clinton Foundation with foreign governments)? The previous (now restored) structure of the lede does not actually tell the readers what the emails are until the last paragraph. It immediately goes into theories about how they came into WikiLeaks' hands, continues with a discussion of their authenticity, and only then, at the very end, mentions what the emails actually are. -Thucydides411 (talk) 01:13, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

I don't know what kind of news search your doing, nor do I know what news you've been reading for the last couple of years, but my search shows the complete opposite. Run a Google News search for "john podesta emails" (no quotes) and then narrow to 2017 and later. I looked through pages and pages of results and all but one were in reference to the hacking, not the contents. Stone, Wikileaks, Mueller investigation, etc. R2 (bleep) 02:30, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

A LexisNexis search for newspaper articles with "podesta emails" (no quotes) since 1 October 2016 yields 1679 hits. Approximately half of the total coverage (835 articles) of the Podesta emails was in 2016. If you restrict your search to 2017 onwards, you're removing half of the total coverage of the Podesta emails, which does not seem like a reasonable way to go about things to me. Looking through the coverage from 2016, nearly every article discusses the content of the emails. I'll give the titles of every 10th hit:

1. "WikiLeaks emails: what they reveal about mechanics of Clinton's campaign;Tens of thousands of emails hacked from campaign chairman John Podesta's account have provided an unprecedented window into a presidential run" (The Guardian, 6 November 2016)
2. "Highlights From the Clinton Campaign Emails: How to Deal With Sanders and Biden" (New York Times, 11 October 2016)
3. "Wikileaks releases Barack Obama's e-mails from 2008" (Daily News and Analysis, 23 October 2016)
4. "Hil team in '15 panic on Bam emails" (NY Daily News, 26 October 2016) - Note: "Hil" and "Bam" is short for "Hillary" and "Obama" here, respectively, and the article is about revelations from the Podesta emails.
5. "Emails Disclose Clinton's Strain to Hone Message" (New York Times, 11 October 2016)
6. "Leaked emails show tension inside Clinton's camp" (San Diego Tribune, 11 October 2016)
7. "Leaked Emails About Clinton Hearten Rival" (New York Times, 13 October 2016)

It goes on and on like this. Note that these results are not ordered by date, so it really is the case that nearly half of the total reporting on the Podesta emails was during the 2016 election campaign.

If we look at the post-2016 news articles (844 in total) about the Podesta emails, they look like this:

1. "Mueller looks into timing of email leaks" (Washington Post, 31 October 2018)
2. "Trump confidant Stone is arrested, faces obstruction charge" (Abbotsford News, 25 January 2019)
3. "Justice Dept. Accuses Russians of Interfering in Midterm Elections" (New York Times, 19 October 2018)

In other words, about half of the total coverage of the Podesta emails has been dedicated to the contents, and about half to various stages of the Mueller investigation. In the edit summary of your reversion, you wrote that the "contents were recentism." Most of the post-2016 coverage of the Podesta emails is about various developments in the Mueller investigation, as you can see above. It is just as much recentism to focus on news coverage of the Mueller investigation as it is to focus on news coverage of the contents of the emails.

Half of the total coverage of the Podesta emails is about their contents. Half the coverage is about the Mueller investigation. The logical thing to do is to first explain what happened (WikiLeaks published Podesta's emails), and then to chronologically go through the different aspects of the subject: the contents, the impact on the election, and the Mueller investigation. -Thucydides411 (talk) 07:35, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

I don't have access to LexisNexis's news database, but it sounds like it's fairly consistent with what Google News is saying. I don't think we discount all of the WikiLeaks, Mueller, and Stone stuff as recentism; those are items of lasting significance and will surely make U.S. history books, and the Podesta e-mails are a major of that. On the flip side, I've yet to see any evidence that the contents of the Podesta e-mails had much long-term impact on the 2016 election or anything since then. Sure there was the Brazile kerfuffle and firing, but that was insider baseball and an embarrassment for CNN. By all accounts the contents of the DNC e-mails had a much bigger impact. This is reflected by the fact that, as you acknowledge, there has been very little coverage of the contents of Podesta's e-mails since the 2016 election. R2 (bleep) 15:38, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

You haven't shown any evidence that the Russiagate aspect will have longer lasting impact than the contents of the emails either. The post-2016 coverage isn't about "lasting impact." It's about individual developments in the Mueller investigation that were reported when they happened, in the exact same way as the contents of the emails were reported on as they were released.

"Sure there was the Brazile kerfuffle and firing, but that was insider baseball and an embarrassment for CNN." FiveThirtyEight's analysis says that the emails were much more than "insider baseball." As FiveThirtyEight explains, Google Trends show persistent interest in WikiLeaks from early October 2016 through the election. Because of the way the emails were published tranche-by-tranche, FiveThirtyEight can't determine their impact on polling data, but they can see that there was significant, sustained interest in the emails. If you look at the random selection of "podesta emails"-related articles I listed above, you can also see that there was far more reported than just the CNN town-hall questions. There was a lot of reporting on tension within the Clinton campaign, about who should be picked as the VP candidate, about criticisms of Clinton within her team, about the Clinton Foundation's relations with various governments, and more. The Podesta emails were a significant story during the 2016 campaign, but you wouldn't know that from reading the first paragraph of the lede. In fact, you wouldn't even know what the emails were, or why anyone ever cared about them.

"there has been very little coverage of the contents of Podesta's e-mails since the 2016 election." Almost all coverage of Podesta's emails has been short-term. They got reported on when they came out. They got mentioned in news articles when specific events occurred in the Mueller investigation that related to them. You're saying that the latter establishes "lasting impact," and that therefore, the lede should not begin by describing what the emails are, but rather should go immediately into theories about how they became public. That is a very poor way to frame an article. It would be like writing an article on Hillary Clinton that began, "Hillary Clinton's 2016 election defeat has been variously attributed to the Comey letter, poor polling in the Midwest and the Electoral College." That would obviously be absurd, but it's the approach being taken here. The article should begin by describing its subject. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:56, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

What kind of evidence would you expect me to show? Do you seriously believe that Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections won't be considered highly significant 5, 10, 20 years from now? And will history books really be talking about Donna Brazile or HRC's Wall Street speeches? R2 (bleep) 18:07, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with whether Russiagate will be considered significant. It has to do with the coverage of the Podesta emails themselves. The Podesta emails themselves are a very small part of Russiagate, which is a much broader scandal, and the emails themselves have received approximately equal attention for their contents and for their relation to Russiagate. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:47, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Podesta's e-mails are mentioned in the third sentence of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. They're mentioned on page 1 of the Mueller Report, and on the first 3 pages of its executive summary. I don't see how you can put together a short summary of "Russiagate" without some reference to hacked e-mails. R2 (bleep) 20:51, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

That's great, but it doesn't address the question of how much coverage various aspects of the Podesta emails have received. The "Russian interference" article should mention the Podesta emails somewhere in the lede. That doesn't say what the "Podesta emails" article should give prominence to. Approximately half of the coverage of the Podesta emails deals with the contents of those emails, and FiveThirtyEight has written that there is evidence that the emails were a major factor during the 2016 Presidential election.

All I'm arguing for is a clearer structure for the lede, in which the subject of the article is described at the outset. The reader doesn't even find out what this article is about until the second paragraph. Reading the lede, one gets the impression that the author is afraid to tell the reader what the article is about until they've sufficiently convinced the reader that this is an article about Russia. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:10, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

I disagree. The article has always been about an event--the hacking of John Podesta's Gmail account--and the first paragraph makes it clear what that event was. If you're concerned about a mismatch between the article and the title, then we could propose a move to Hacking of John Podesta's emails or something like that, though I personally feel the current title is clear enough. R2 (bleep) 21:19, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Again, the contents of the emails have received approximately equal weight in news coverage as theories about how WikiLeaks obtained them. Both are equal parts of this article. You're suggesting that this article is just about the hacking of the emails, but that's not the case, and it wouldn't be justified by the news coverage. This article is not only a spin-off of the various Russiagate articles. It deals with a subject that is related to Russiagate, but which also is not entirely contained within Russiagate. The framing of the lede clearly tries to downplay half of the story - the publication of the emails and the widespread reporting on their contents. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:02, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

A rule of thumb, when you find yourself repeating the same points a second or third time, it's time to try something different. Let's let other folks weigh in. R2 (bleep) 22:07, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

That goes both ways. I think our positions have become clearer through this exchange, however. I think that the news coverage shows that there are two major aspects to this subject (the publication and contents of the emails on the one hand, and Russiagate on the other). You think that this article should only (or overwhelmingly) be about the Russiagate aspect of the emails. I think that would essentially make this article into yet another Russiagate coatrack. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:51, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

I don't appreciate you caricaturing my position. I suggest you read WP:ENEMY for next time. R2 (bleep) 22:59, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

There's no need for that sort of hostility. If you think I've mischaracterized your position, just clarify it. -Thucydides411 (talk) 02:45, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

I’d rather let my comments stand for themselves. R2 (bleep) 04:00, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Conspiracy Theorist interest in Wiki Leaks

Whoever is reverting it back to American public, conveniently ignores the fact that the majority of the American Public never heard of Wiki Leaks. ToddGrande (talk) 10:42, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

The referenced article concludes that "Americans were interested in the WikiLeaks releases." It doesn't say anything about conspiracy theorists. ^Falling_Gravity 18:25, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

What specific words are supposedly "coded language", and what reliable sources describe exactly those words in that way?

The end of the lead says this, with two RS:

"Proponents of the extensively discredited Pizzagate conspiracy theory falsely claimed the emails contained coded messages which supported their conspiracy theory."

Do you have more than that? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:04, 10 September 2023 (UTC)