Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, said that he has never read the stolen Sony emails that were published on numerous websites and indexed on Wikileaks.
Appearing on a Vanity Fair-sponsored panel in San Francisco Tuesday, Lynton said that one year after a devastating cyberattack that nearly crippled the studio, people still come up to him to discuss his private correspondence.
“The part that was distressing was the extent to which people had decided to go through it,” he said. “You’d be sitting there at lunch — and it still happens — and they wander up to your table and say, ‘Oh, I just read through the correspondence you had with so-and-so. That was really interesting.’ And you’re sort of thinking to yourself, really? That seems an odd way to spend an afternoon.”
Lynton seemed to assign partial blame for the widespread publication of Sony’s leaked emails to Julian Assange, whose Wikileaks made the trove easy to search.
“I haven’t even been back through any of the Wikileaks stuff,” said Lynton, who previously condemned the publishing of Sony’s stolen emails on the basis that they weren’t newsworthy.
Asked why former Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal wasn’t “fired earlier” when sexist and racist emails between her and producer Scott Rudin were made public, Lynton said he believed that their private correspondence was “taken out of context” and that “Amy did not leave the company because of those e-mails.”