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Media
PBS site hacked with fake Tupac story
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 1 June 2011
The website of the PBS TV network in the US was hacked last week, with hackers posting a story on the ‘PBS NewsHour’ site reporting that Tupac Shakur was alive and well and living in New Zealand, when, of course, we all know he’s now working at my local chip shop with Elvis.
The hack was seemingly in response to a recent edition of PBS show ‘FrontLine’ which looked into WikiLeaks and the publishing of all those American diplomatic cables last year. The hackers seemingly felt the show was biased against the whistle-blowers website, and that it unfairly portrayed its editor-in-chief Julian Assange. A spokeswoman for PBS admitted that hackers has also got and published logins and passwords for the network’s press site and intranet.
Frontline Executive Producer David Fanning said he was disappointed by the hack, not least because viewers had been invited to comment on its WikiLeaks documentary on the show’s website, and the views of others critical of the programme had been willingly published.
Says Fanning: “From our point of view, we just see it as a disappointing and irresponsible act, especially since we have been very open to publishing criticism of the film … and the film included other points of view. This kind of action is irresponsible and chilling”.
