CNN is not publishing "HanAholeSolo's" name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same.
CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.
According to Assange on twitter CNN broke several extortion laws here. Donald Trump Jr already retweeted it, only a matter of time before Trump Sr hears about it.
CNN doxing people over memes, what a time to be alive
We only have CNN's account, but if we're taking their account at face value, CNN did not mention a "threat" in the events preceding the user's apology:
> On Monday, KFile attempted to contact the man by email and phone but he did not respond. On Tuesday, "HanAholeSolo" posted his apology on the subreddit /The_Donald and deleted all of his other posts.
By CNN's account, the user deleted his posts and issued an apology before actually speaking with CNN (who reached him apparently afterwards). It's possible the initial contact email contained a threat but that's doubtful. CNN would get more page views by coercing the man into an interview than it would by telling him to shut everything down.
Now, the statement that CNN reserves the right to publish the man's identity if he decides to renege on his policy might be seen as a threat of sorts, but that doesn't read as blackmail. Keep in mind that CNN is probably within its rights to publish the man's identity if they felt like it, because under defamation law, the man would qualify as a limited-purpose public figure for not just making the GIF, but claiming credit for it publicly.
Edit: again, this is all predicated on taking CNN's account at face value, which we kind of have to do for now since the other party isn't speaking up. But I don't see any reason to doubt the events leading up to the apology -- e.g. How the user apparently freaked out when CNN attempted to contact him, which made him realize how findable he was due to personal details he allegedly posted in his past. The cleaning of comment history is expected, given the alleged offensiveness of the comments.
Given that the user allegedly posted things such as a CNN roster with stars of David for certain people on that roster, and other anti-Semitic content, CNN would be well within its prerogative to publicize the user's alleged history of anti-Semitism toward the media, which would further add discredit to the president tweeting the user's content. That CNN agreed to leave the guy alone after the apology is quite surprising in this day and age.
Original: "How CNN found the Reddit user behind the Trump wrestling GIF"
Submitted: "CNN Forces Apology from GIF Creator by Doxxing, Threatening to Publish Identity"
edit: Besides being a change in title, the editorializing here comes from the fact that in CNN's account of the events, it did not force an apology; the user didn't respond to inquiries but preemptively deleted his comment history and posted a public apology before CNN actually interviewed him.
Should this comment be flagged for editorializing CNN's behavior by quoting out of context?
Their interest in him was solely because of a GIF that lampooned their organization. They then based their opinion to spare him public identification not on the basis of this GIF, but on - in their terms - taking down "ALL his offending posts" - i.e. everything this reporter deemed so - not just the GIF, over which probably no one would have threatened his personal safety. None of this deletion happened before CNN's investigation. This has the progression of a pressured attrition, not an apology, which "came after CNN's KFile identified the man". CNN then says it will hold power over him to expose him with no indication that the judgment to do so comes from where but inside CNN ... All in THEIR account of events, which expectedly would cast them in the best light on this incident
> Their interest in him was solely because of a GIF that lampooned their organization.
No. For starters, flagging is for breaking HN rules, not for disagreeing with the content.
But to the subject of the matter, CNN was interested in him after Trump, currently the President of the United States, tweeted it. If you read r/the_donald regularly, you'd see that everyday CNN-bashing memes are published without apparent care by CNN.
The rest of your comment is a word salad. But yes, you're right, this is all based "in THEIR account of events". But we have some reason to give them some benefit of the doubt. Because as far as we know, and at this point, CNN hasn't publicly identified the Redditor, even though they, or any news org or blogger, could do so given the Redditor's status as a limited-purpose public figure and the Redditor's own posts that apparently reveal his personal details.
Remember that CNN's purported war is not with Reddit trolls, it's with President Trump. And they'd get more play out of identifying the person and republishing all of his ostensibly racist and anti-Semite comment history and arguing that Trump was careless in using a meme from such an allegedly disreputable person.
If I broke a rule, I apologize, flag away. The rest of your comment is an evasion of the issue, which is that their citation of his questionable but completely unrelated prejudiced posts are what would cause this individual to fear for his and his family's safety through his public identification, not his CNN GIF, when that is the only reason for their interest in him as a limited public figure.
EDIT - where is that rule posted about changing titles?
> Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or adding a parenthetical remark saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important...Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.
Andrew Kaczynski, who tracked down the author based on clues from his reddit history, has also broken a number of stories by personally reviewing hundreds of hours of archives, such as those of Trump on the Howard Stern show. He is one of the most innovative journalists working today [0], comparable in impact to the Pulitzer-winning crowd-sourcing methods used by David Farenthold to break the news about Trump's lies around his philanthropy [1].
CNN is not publishing "HanAholeSolo's" name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same.
CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.