BotNet News

Cyberthreat News

As cyber attacks on journalists increase and the threat landscape becomes more complex, journalism must evolve its approach to reporting them. From the groundbreaking work Kashmir Hill has done on the deep roots of tech giants to the first-person accounts Wired’s Andy Greenberg and CNN’s Donia O’Sullivan have provided of the QAnon hacker group’s influence in right-wing politics, journalism about cybersecurity is increasingly getting more substantive and broader than simply writing about “the latest big hack.”

However, there is still a lot of room for improvement. For example, a series of research studies by the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative shows that while overall coverage of cyber stories increased over the past few years, many of those articles are still shallow and sensational. As such, the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber initiative has been working with a range of partners to better understand how mainstream news outlets cover cyber issues and to identify how these organizations can improve their coverage.

This includes an ongoing collaboration with the Digital Newsroom to better support investigative journalists, particularly those who live in (or work from) countries prone to hostile governments or authoritarian regimes. Other partnerships include the Global Encryption Coalition to promote and defend encryption, the Iraqi Network for Social Media to provide training and support for independent journalists, and Internews, which provides a journalist security assessment tool and a reporter’s guide on how to protect online privacy while covering sensitive topics like human rights or corruption.