You're free to check his user history. I believe someone recovered it before he deleted it.

Chances are it involves Antifa. I know many hate subreddits released a bunch of personal info for people with antifa. 

CNN has been behaving like a cornered animal as of late. They've always been a garbage station, but they've never been so consistently called out on it. Personally, I'm enjoying watching them thrash about and dig their own hole ever deeper.

I don't feel too bad for this guy as he appears to be rather an asshole, but News Stations ought not be in the practice of blackmailing gif users. It's so incredibly petty looking that I can hardly believe this really happened lol

I ceratinly hope I'm not the first person to post this, but this isn't at all what happened. 

I mean, if they asked him if they wanted his name to be posted online, wouldn't that be doxxing?

Seat's taken CNN

There is no indication that this happened. 

CNN says that he issued the apology and deleted his account prior to CNN ever speaking with him. You could assume that they're lying, but there has been no indication of that, and common sense dictates that they're telling the truth, for a couple of reasons.

1.) Why would CNN blackmail a reddit user in exchange for only an apology? The risk/reward equation here just doesn't make sense.

2.) If they did blackmail him, and subsequently lied about it in their clarification statement, then this reddit guy is sitting on million dollar information right now. Radio silence from him though, except for that he contacted CNN to tell them that he agrees with their assessment of the situation.

The most sensible read on this is that the reddit user realized he screwed up and took corrective measures once he realized that it's pretty easy to figure out who someone is from their reddit history. CNN figured out who this guy was, but exercised discretion in not publishing his name, but wanted to make it clear that they didn't make any deal with regards to publishing or not publishing (hence they reserve the right to change their mind). The issue was complicated by the fact that CNN phrased their disclsoure of the situation in an extremely awkward way.

To summarize this, it still falls on CNN. They made a big deal about it so your #1 item there is already shot beyond unreasonable doubt.

#2, we'll never really know.

I always forget that this is our actual reality while I'm laughing at how insane it all is. But reading this thread gets me laughing even more.

It is a big deal that a cesspool of racist trash produces stuff that eventually finds it's way into official white house statements IMO.

The subject matter is also a pretty big deal in light of the fact that the most powerful man on earth, on most days, sends out messages demonizing the press. 

On top of all that, the Gianforte incident proved that the USA is now pretty much okay with people who physically assault journalists holding high office. 

For the most part, he's got the gist of it right. The one part he's kinda wrong on "We'll threaten to ron him unless he apologizes for the whole thing" is that CNN threatened him with doxing if he went back to shit posting or doing something cnn didn't like even though he apologized for a gif he didn't make and his shit posting.