Media Doxing: The Destructive Ambiguity Of Public Interest And The Press

In Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974) (“Gertz”) [1], the Supreme Court recognized that private individuals deserve greater protection from public scrutiny because they have not voluntarily assumed public roles inviting attention or criticism. This distinction between the public and private spheres has become foundational to the distribution of privacy rights within American society. Individuals possess an expectation of privacy that protects their personal lives from public intrusion, while the public sphere is characterized by accountability and transparency, particularly for those who hold positions of power [2]. The press, as an institution situated within the public sphere, has a variety of functions within its constitutionally protected role in informing the public. Yet the questions of what constitutes “the press” and appropriate checks against its publishing process remain unresolved. The rise of social media and online news networks has further blurred these boundaries, allowing individuals to publicize personal details on profiles and in comment sections willingly. The norm is to share, which contrasts sharply with the strong value of privacy held by previous generations. This increased transparency has enabled communities and interest groups to thrive within cyberspace, but it has also given rise to a darker phenomenon: doxing.

Doxing is the release of an individual’s previously private personal information (i.e., information they chose to withhold from the internet) onto the internet to be accessed by members of the general public [3]. Doxing can occur to anyone, regardless of their influence in the public sphere; the only requirement for being doxed is to pique the interest of someone else (the “doxer”). Modern journalists, prompted by controversial or socially divergent posts, now examine the online acts of private individuals (i.e., not government workers or public figures), often doxing them to various degrees under the guise of public interest [4]. This concept, referred to as “media doxing,” has become extremely controversial among participants in debates surrounding freedom of expression [5].

Journalism has long operated as a contested and ambiguous check on political power, and questions about how the press is defined, what legal constraints it faces, and what checks exist upon it have persisted for more than a century. This article argues that media doxing undermines the First Amendment’s protection of anonymous expression and chills speech across online platforms. While the press plays a constitutionally protected role in informing the public, the use of a “public interest” standard is insufficient for determining when exposure is justified and unconstitutionally treats private individuals as public officials. Legal boundaries must therefore be established to reconcile the press’s rights with individuals’ rights to privacy and anonymous speech. This article will first illustrate the destructive ambiguity of the public interest standard used in determining the legality of media doxing by referencing both legal research and three Supreme Court decisions that serve as relevant precedent. It will then discuss the socio-legal distinction between journalists and private individuals as outlined by the First Amendment and Supreme Court precedent. To conclude, this article will end by linking the effects of both constitutional overreaches together and follow with a potential policy solution for the problems of media doxing.

Doxers can have various objectives in releasing information. David Douglas, a research scientist from the University of Queensland, distinguishes acts of doxing into categories based on the doxer’s objectives. The first category, deanonymizing doxing, refers to the online release of information that reveals the identity of an individual using a pseudonym or withholding their name [6]. This type of doxing has the most straightforward connection to journalism: as information access and internet activity have expanded, deanonymizing prominent bloggers and commenters across the internet for shock value has become a large aspect of free press culture. Douglas correctly argues that doxing is justified when it serves the public interest or benefits the general public, which coincides with existing Supreme Court precedent. Under Justice Brennan’s framing of a categorical view in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) [7], speech on matters of public interest receives the highest protections under the First Amendment, while categories like obscenity or true threats receive lesser protection [8]. Yet the use of this standard is problematic because it is subjective and frequently defined by journalists rather than the public itself. The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s 2010 exposure of a commenter linked to Judge Shirley Saffold illustrates this issue. The newspaper justified the disclosure as serving community interests, but Jasmine McNealy’s study found that readers overwhelmingly viewed it as unethical and invasive [9]. This case reflects a broader legal tension that has come to the Supreme Court several times. Consider McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (1995) [10], where the Supreme Court held that anonymous political speech is protected under the First Amendment. The Court concluded that anonymity shields from direct tyranny of the majority, allowing individuals to express controversial opinions without fear of retribution. Similarly, in Talley v. California (1960) [11], the Court struck down an ordinance banning anonymous pamphlets, reaffirming that the right to speak anonymously is embedded in the broader guarantee of free expression [12]. The Plain Dealer’s media doxing arguably failed to conform to Justice Brenann’s categorical approach because the disclosure did not advance a demonstrable public interest tied to the most-protected category. It instead compromised the speaker’s anonymity with no balancing of individual privacy.

Despite its subjectivity, the “public interest” justification remains appropriate in certain extreme cases. The First Amendment does not protect true threats or speech that incites imminent lawless action, as recognized in Virginia v. Black (2003) [13] and Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) [14]. In these cases, the Court held that disclosure legitimately serves the public’s interest in safety. At the same time, significant ambiguities in the Court’s jurisprudence remain regarding the reporter’s situational privilege to reveal sources (cf. Branzburg v. Hayes, 1972) [15], the limits of publisher immunity from criminal prosecution, and whether individual journalists should receive different treatment under general criminal laws regarding the reporting process. Thus, when journalists expose private individuals in the name of public interest without a clear categorical reason, they often intrude on the constitutional rights of private individuals. This undermines the democratic discourse the First Amendment was designed to preserve, as the ambiguity of what constitutes the public interest makes mistakes like these increasingly likely. These legal rules depend on another unresolved issue: who counts as “the press” and why?

The difficulty of distinguishing the press from the public complicates efforts to apply these protections and limits, and the Supreme Court has established precedent that arguably does so. In Gertz, the Court created a distinction between the more public members of the press and the private majority, as well as a difference in codified privacy [16]. However, the act of media doxing the withheld information of a private individual undermines the Majority’s decision in Gertz, and the increased reliance on deanonymizing doxing by journalists to maintain a compelling press has caused new forms of online doxing to take shape. Targeting and delegitimizing doxing — which discloses specific personal details and exposes private information to discredit an individual, respectively — have established a large presence in American journalism since the early 2010s [17]. For Justine Sacco, these forms of doxing were responses to crude posts made from her personal Twitter account relating to the AIDS epidemic in the Global South [18]. While she was initially targeted and delegitimized by other private users, large journals (including Buzzfeed and the New York Post) began to reveal more incriminating tweets and places Sacco frequented on their mainstream platforms [19]. Media doxing amplified the initial social harms of Sacco’s tweets due to journalists’ institutional credibility and reach, as well as Sacco’s lack of social and economic power to defend against large news outlets. Sacco was fired from her position and found it nearly impossible to secure new employment due to the notoriety she acquired from being media doxed [20]. The legal distinction between the press and the public established by Gertz was ignored by the media in their attack on Sacco; the amount of information the press exposed did not reflect her status as a private individual, imparting “attention” legally applicable only to those who voluntarily become public figures. Therefore, the media doxing of private individuals like Sacco inappropriately extends the logic reserved for public figures to the speech of those who have not consented to public exposure, further contradicting the categorization that safeguards both free expression and personal privacy.

Worries surrounding social and legal regulation of media doxing exist despite disapproval and constitutional overreach. University of Oregon Professor and Director of Journalism, Seth Lewis, along with many of the journalists he consulted, believes that public calls for regulating the press stem from a pre-existing demonization of journalists worldwide — characterized by “fake news” rhetoric and resistance against the press [21]. Based on this, Lewis correctly argues that regulating journalistic conduct through popular pressure would unconstitutionally suppress the press, as any legal mechanism that accounts for popular pressure resembles prior restraint by discouraging or preventing publication before it occurs [22]. Lewis also indicates that restraints could lead to viewpoint discrimination by penalizing journalists for publishing disfavored media, which is also prohibited by the First Amendment [23]. This concern reflects the Supreme Court’s reasoning in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971) [24], which held that government interference with the press constitutes unconstitutional prior restraint outside of extreme cases. Thus, overregulation of the press could similarly undermine journalism’s role as a public watchdog, weakening its capacity to expose wrongdoing among powerful figures and undermining its constitutionally codified powers to report freely.

While founded on the good intention of preserving a free press, these qualms fail to account for the distinction between the press and ordinary people, specifically how members of the press voluntarily adhere to certain restrictions and the attention of a public individual. The First Amendment’s Press Clause gives journalists a constitutionally codified platform to represent public interests and report on issues relevant to society [25]. This places them on a socio-legal pedestal: they are first situated as contributors to the free press as opposed to everyday consumers, and their voices are then amplified as people engage with their work [26]. The relationship between journalists and private individuals is unique in that the identities of journalists are inherently public, attached to their work in the same way that policies are attached to politicians. This ethos and Gertz indicate that journalists themselves are public figures reliant on the engagement of the voices they represent. Journalists willingly become subjects of scrutiny as a condition of their power, whereas private users do not. This constitutional asymmetry between journalists and private citizens further supports a stronger legal protection for online anonymity, as public figures themselves are forcing the general public to reap the criticism and consequences they are actively avoiding as private members of society. This contentious relationship has been brought to the court in recent years with Bartnicki v. Vopper (2001) [27]. While the Court protected the press’s right to publish lawfully obtained information on matters of public concern, the Court emphasized the need to balance this right with individual privacy expectations [28]. Since previous precedent established more encompassing privacy rights for the general public and classified journalists as public figures, consequently amplifying their voice, it can be concluded that media doxing’s removal of anonymity disrupts the dynamic between the Free Press and the people.

The precedent set by the Supreme Court specifically establishes anonymity as a form of expression protected under the First Amendment for private individuals. If the government compelled citizens to disclose their political affiliations, such a law would clearly violate freedom of expression. Similarly, media doxing compels disclosure through indirect means, leveraging vested journalistic authority to force transparency from those who do not possess a distinction in the press. By transforming anonymity into liability, media doxing discourages online discourse and weakens the possibility for productive discourse that the First Amendment seeks to protect. Individuals may self-censor to avoid exposure, meaning doxing illegally inhibits the exercise of their constitutional freedoms. Moreover, the erosion of trust caused by such practices contributes to the anti-media rhetoric Lewis describes, suggesting that the decline of faith in journalism is, at least in part, self-inflicted through disregard for constitutional boundaries.

The lack of a federal legal standard for addressing media doxing underscores the challenge of protecting privacy within the bounds of the free press protections this article has outlined. Under current U.S. law, no statute explicitly prohibits doxing. The True Threat Doctrine, which establishes types of speech unprotected by the First Amendment, can only be applied when targeting intimidation or consumer data misuse rather than journalistic exposure [29]. Moreover, the First Amendment’s strong protections for press activity make it difficult to impose liability without triggering constitutional concerns. The gap between ethical obligations and legal accountability leaves victims of media doxing with little recourse, despite the demonstrable chilling effects on free expression.

This ambiguity demonstrates the need for legislative reform. Attorney and legal researcher Batuhan Kukul proposes that Congress establish a legal definition of doxing to create a foundation for consistent enforcement and judicial interpretation [30]. Kukul also recommends revising Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which currently shields online platforms from liability for user content and grants them discretion in moderating harmful material [31]. By conditioning this immunity on the removal of content that doxes private individuals, lawmakers could curb media doxing without infringing on constitutionally protected press activity. This reform aligns with First Amendment principles because it targets conduct rather than content, promoting accountability among media companies while preserving the press’s ability to report on genuine matters of public concern. However, the question of what checks are placed on the press still remains. Reconciling this requires recognizing that the First Amendment and existing precedent does not leave the press unchecked; the categorical view of Justice Brennan imparts some restrictions on the press that serve as a baseline for future legislation [32]. Structural remedies, such as civil liability, professional norms, and market competition, may be developed to constrain press abuses without granting the government discretionary power to censor. Thus, accountability can be imposed without eroding the press’s constitutional function as an independent monitor of state power. The issue of media doxing reflects the evolution of the free press — technology has expanded its reach beyond traditional reporting on politics and public figures. The rise of media doxing targeting low-profile social media users highlights a troubling trend in journalism; while the “public interest” standard may justify exposure in extreme cases, it cannot govern everyday journalistic conduct. Journalists’ socio-legal standing amplifies this harm, as their actions can suppress private individuals’ freedom of expression protected by the First Amendment, which includes the right to anonymity. Adopting some of Kukul’s proposals — establishing a legal definition of doxing and revising the application of Section 230 — offers a more sustainable solution. These measures can protect individuals’ rights while preserving the press’s vital role in holding powerful public figures accountable, ensuring a balance between individual privacy and the public's need for information. Such reforms would protect individual privacy without undermining the essential function of a free and independent press.

Notes

[1] "Gertz v. Robert Welch Inc." Oyez. Accessed November 9, 2025. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1973/72-617.

Facts: Attorney Elmer Gertz was hired by a family whose son had been killed by a Chicago police officer. American Opinion, a publication of the John Birch Society, falsely accused Gertz of orchestrating a Communist conspiracy against law enforcement. Gertz sued for libel. The publisher argued that New York Times v. Sullivan required him to prove actual malice because the statements involved matters of public interest.

Question: Does the Sullivan actual-malice standard apply to defamation claims brought by private individuals?

Majority: 5–4 in favor of Gertz, written by Justice Powell.

[2] Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., Oyez.

[3] David M. Douglas, “Doxing: A Conceptual Analysis,” Ethics and Information Technology 18, no. 3 (September 2016): 199–210, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-016-9406-0, 199.

[4] Douglas, “Doxing: A Conceptual Analysis,” 199.

[5] Jasmine McNealy, “Readers React Negatively to Disclosure of Poster’s Identity,” Newspaper Research Journal 38, no. 3 (September 2017): 282–92, https://doi.org/10.1177/0739532917722977, 287.

[6] Douglas, “Doxing: A Conceptual Analysis,” 199.

[7] "New York Times Company v. United States." Oyez. Accessed November 9, 2025. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1970/1873.

Facts: The Nixon administration sought to block the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers, a classified Defense Department history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The government argued that publication threatened national security.

Question: Did the government’s attempt to prevent publication violate the First Amendment’s prohibition on prior restraint?

Majority: Per curiam decision, 6–3 in favor of the New York Times and Washington Post.

[8] New York Times Company v. United States, Oyez.

[9] McNealy, “Readers React Negatively to Disclosure of Poster’s Identity,” 286.

[10] “McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission." Oyez. Accessed November 9, 2025. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1994/93-986.

Facts: Margaret McIntyre distributed leaflets opposing a school tax levy without including her name, violating an Ohio statute that prohibited anonymous campaign literature. She was fined and appealed, claiming the law violated her First Amendment rights.

Question: Does an Ohio statute banning anonymous political literature violate the First Amendment?

Majority: 7–2 in favor of McIntyre, written by Justice Stevens.

[11] "Talley v. California." Oyez. Accessed November 9, 2025. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1959/154.

Facts: Los Angeles required anyone distributing handbills to include their name and address. Talley was convicted for distributing anonymous leaflets advocating a boycott of discriminatory businesses. He challenged the ordinance as unconstitutional.

Question: Does a city ordinance requiring the identification of leaflet distributors violate the First Amendment?

Majority: 8–1 in favor of Talley, written by Justice Black.

[12] Talley v. California, Oyez.

[13] "Virginia v. Black." Oyez. Accessed November 9, 2025. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2002/01-1107.

Facts: Several defendants were convicted under a Virginia statute banning cross burning with “intent to intimidate.” One part of the statute defined any cross burning as prima facie evidence of such intent. Defendants argued that the law violated free speech protections.

Question: Does a law banning cross burning with intent to intimidate violate the First Amendment, and is treating cross burning as inherently intimidating constitutional?

Majority: 6–3 (plurality) striking down the prima facie provision, written by Justice O’Connor.

[14] "Brandenburg v. Ohio." Oyez. Accessed November 9, 2025. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1968/492.

Facts: Clarence Brandenburg, a Ku Klux Klan leader, was convicted under an Ohio criminal-syndicalism statute after making a speech at a Klan rally that referenced violence. He argued that the law violated his First Amendment rights.

Question: Does Ohio’s criminal-syndicalism law violate the First Amendment by prohibiting advocacy of violence without requiring intent or likelihood of imminent lawless action?

Majority: Per curiam decision, unanimous in favor of Brandenburg.

[15] Douglas, “Doxing: A Conceptual Analysis,” 199.

[16] "Gertz v. Robert Welch Inc." Oyez. Accessed November 9, 2025. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1973/72-617.

[17] Douglas, “Doxing: A Conceptual Analysis,” 199.

[18] Jon Ronson, “How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life,” The New York Times, February 12, 2015, sec. Magazine, 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html, 1.

[19] Jon Ronson, “How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life,” 1.

[20] "Gertz v. Robert Welch Inc." Oyez. Accessed November 9, 2025. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1973/72-617.

[21] Seth C. Lewis, Rodrigo Zamith, and Mark Coddington, “Online Harassment and Its Implications for the Journalist–Audience Relationship,” Digital Journalism 8, no. 8 (September 13, 2020): 1047–67, https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2020.1811743, 1049.

[22] Lewis, Zamith, and Coddington, “Online Harassment and Its Implications for the Journalist–Audience Relationship,” 1049.

[23] U.S. Const. amend. I.

[24] "New York Times Company v. United States." Oyez. Accessed November 9, 2025. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1970/1873.

[25] U.S. Const. amend. I.

[26] McNealy, “Readers React Negatively to Disclosure of Poster’s Identity,” 286.

[27] “Bartnicki v. Vopper.” Oyez. Accessed November 9, 2025. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2000/99-1687.

Facts: A radio commentator broadcast a phone call between two teachers’ union negotiators that had been illegally intercepted by an unknown third party. The broadcaster did not participate in the interception but knew the recording was unlawfully obtained.

Question: Does the First Amendment protect the disclosure of illegally intercepted communications by a broadcaster who did not participate in the illegal interception?

Majority: 6–3 in favor of Bartnicki/Vopper (protecting the broadcaster), written by Justice Stevens.

[28] Bartnicki v. Vopper, Oyez.

[29] Batuhan Kukul, “Personal Data and Personal Safety: Re-Examining the Limits of Public Data in the Context of Doxing,” International Data Privacy Law 13, no. 3 (September 15, 2023): 182–93, https://doi.org/10.1093/idpl/ipad011, 183.

[30] Kukkul, “Personal Data and Personal Safety,” 183.

[31] Kukul, “Personal Data and Personal Safety,” 192.

[32] Ibid.

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