Was CNN Caught blackmailing meme creator ?

In what appears to be another dent to CNN’s credibility. It appears CNN has threatened to dox the creator of the trump vs CNN meme that went viral after President Trump tweeted it on July 2,2017 with over 300,00 retweets and 500,00 likes.       

In an article written by Andrew Kaczynski it stated that CNN was able to track down the reddit user by using biographical details from the Reddit user’s account before doing a Facebook search to find the meme creator’s real name. In an article published by CNN it states that CNN reserves the right to publish the identity of the meme creator. 

Currently #CNNBlackmail is the Number 1 trending hashtag on twitter with over 100,000 tweets in a few hours.   

In another self-imposed blunder after the Russian fake news scandal in which three CNN employees resigned, reportedly after a 100 million defamation lawsuit was threatened by a Trump associate. If things could not get worse, many on social media including Julian Assange has cited that CNN’s action may be in violation of the State of New York’s criminal code of coercion.

CNN’s troubles could still get worse as James O’Keefe of Project Veritas has proclaimed that more videos of CNN along with other mainstream news outlets remain to be published. His videos in the American Pravda series has above 4 million views on the Project Veritas YouTube page with more to come.  

What are your views?  

Is it ethical to reveal a private citizen’s identity to further a multibillion dollar news empire’s agenda?