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Journalists definitely need to be careful shining public scrutiny on ‘civilians.’ But this really applies to 1) people caught up in stories thru no act of their own 2) people whose main role is as victim and 3) children. Clearly none of these apply here.
2/ It is actually one of the main problems w the digital age that people can become large consequence political actors and remain anonymous. There are some cases where this is a good (activists in police states). But mainly it’s an intrinsic evil in the system,
3/ short circuiting one of the major balancing forces in political and civic engagement. It is not that different from rising demands of major political funders that they require the state to protect their anonymity to prevent reputational harm created by public backlash ...
4/ against their role in the political process. Speech/action + anonymity does have a place. But in most cases it’s an intrinsic problem.
