I trace the media’s eager embrace of using hacked emails from politicians to the Sarah Palin email hack back in 2008.

It’s possible to point to earlier dates, but this was the first major election hacking issue in America in which emails from a top national Republican figure were stolen during a presidential campaign. 

The media jumped on the hacked material, despite its 4chan origins, and was disappointed that there wasn’t really anything there that backed up its political narratives.

Since then that was the default. Period.

The big boom in political hacks and leaks, including by the Russians, was based on the understanding that if you hacked emails, passed them along to a cutout, no matter how blatant, the media would jump on them, doubly and triply so if they were Republican emails. It wasn’t all that long ago that the media was happy to use Elliot Broidy’s emails courtesy of Qatari hackers, likely linked to the Islamic terror state’s operations. But now suddenly the media has developed scruples.

At least when the emails involve Biden’s son, Hunter, and come at a time when they might cost Biden the election.

Now, there’s no actual evidence that Hunter’s emails were hacked. They seem to come from digital devices that he abandoned. That’s not hacking. But then again the media widely published crazy claims that Jeff Bezos’ nude photos had been hacked by the Saudi crown prince. It helps to own the Washington Post.

But the bottom line is that the media has been fine with hacked emails up until this point. The hypocrisy, like so much else, is blatant and contemptible.

The new normal is that there are no standards, only naked agendas cloaked in transparent narratives.