Seth Rogen Slams Media for the Way They Handled the Sony Hack
Seth Rogen is still angry about the 2014 Sony hack, but he admits it’s the way the media handled the incident that has him fuming.
“That is honestly the thing that drives me f***ing crazy,” Rogen told host Bill Simmons on a recent episode of HBO’s Any Given Wednesday when asked if it upsets him that the press referred to the stolen emails as “leaked” property.
The cyberattack on Sony was widely covered by the press and resulted in the exit of Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chair Amy Pascal. It also inspired a discussion about the wage gap in Hollywood, after an email revealed that Jennifer Lawrence was paid less than her male costars in American Hustle.
Still, the comedian feels that the media’s coverage of the event had a more negative impact than positive.
“Look what happened as a result of all that,” he said. “One person lost [her] job: a woman who was running the studio, who specifically had a very feminist agenda in the best way possible. She greenlit the Ghostbusters movie. She had been talking about making movies specifically less homophobic in a lot of ways, and she’s the one person who lost her job as a result of all of it.”
Rogen added that what people will remember from the hack is how poorly the press handled it.
“It was the first major cyberattack that actually kind of put the media to the test of like, ‘How do we deal with this?‘” he said before likening the hack to a home invasion. “Someone just robbed your house and gave every one of your personal photos, diaries, your letters, your correspondences, and basically just left it on the street corner. What are we going to do with that? Do you protect the victim of the crime? Do you do what the perpetrator of the crime is hoping you’re going to do?”
The attack is suspected to be a response from North Korean state-sponsored hackers to Rogen’s film The Interview, a comedy about an assassination attempt on Kim Jong Un. While none of Rogen’s emails were released, he sympathized with those whose personal correspondence made headlines.
Check out the video to hear what Rogen had to say, and tune in to The Insider With Yahoo on TV tonight for the latest in entertainment news.
