What Chinese hacking means for journalism

Forget layoffs and paywalls: Recent reports of cyberattacks by Chinese hackers have made cybersecurity a pressing issue for the media industry.

In recent weeks, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have all announced that they were victims of Chinese hacking attacks. (Twitter also announced that it was a victim of cyberattacks, but did not name China.)

These are minor skirmishes in a larger cyberwar that usually involves corporations and government agencies, but the effects on the media industry -- and on journalism -- could be very severe. Primarily because cyberattacks are almost impossible to stop. No matter how often newspapers find ways to keep hackers out, hackers will find ways of getting back in.

"Journalists have to use computers and the Internet constantly to do their jobs. If you do that, you’re opening yourself up to attack," Slate's Farhood Manjoo wrote recently. "Sure, you can and should take precautions against hacking.... But Chinese hackers have used similar tactics to hit Google and the White House, too. In a large organization, someone is going to slip up, and it only takes one. This suggests that if they’re determined—which they are—hackers could get to pretty much any journalist they wish."

The papers' executives understand this. "I'm sure they'll be back," Marc Frons, the Times’s chief information officer, said in a recent TimesCast interview.

That isn't likely to deter American journalists from reporting on China, but it could scare Chinese sources wary of appearing on American journalists computers.

"China probably couldn’t care less that its hacking effort has been unearthed," Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review writes. "The chilling effect on future potential sources is going to make reporting on it that much harder."