Good! I look forward to seeing the lack of method applied by Newsweek shown in court documents. It was a phenomenally irresponsible thing for them to publish, and I hope they pay for it.
edit: a friend pointed out that I should probably say that I write for nbc news so I'm kind of trashing the competition. This is really just my personal distaste speaking, though.
The reporter's attitude even after it was demonstrated how sloppy her work was (if she didn't know) really put a nail in the coffin of having any sympathy for her
As someone who has been fighting in court for a number of years against an author and publisher who widely distributed blatantly false material, with plenty of hard evidence to support my claims, I think this will be a really hard lawsuit to win. Newsweek will argue First Amendment all day long. Defamation law varies by state and California's standard involves "special damage," which might be hard to prove for someone without steady employment. (See http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/california-defamation-law.) There might be some kind of emotional distress claim, which would make sense, but it's not going to be easy to put a number on.
You might expect to see a settlement given Newsweek's backtracking.
[I'm not a lawyer. This isn't even close to being legal advice.]
I hope something good for Dorian Nakamoto comes out of this whole nonsense because he's obviously a guy whose seen better times. Everyone at Newsweek needs to quit and go find a real job because their entire existence only made sense before Digg and Reddit came into existence. There's no journalism there, it's just the thing you flip through for the most attention-grabbing bits.
The point is not that there are a few bad apples out there, but that Reddit (and other crowd sourced media) have limited ability to police/prevent such actors and their actions. I posit that the editors of Newsweek and other assorted old media have more control over their reporters both before and after the story is published.
For anyone else who doesn't know this story completely, this is about reverse sexism - Where a female reporter had done her homework wrong, convinced a man into having a casual conversation/interview and then went about to publish his entire home address, accusing him of being the bitcoin founder, putting his life in grave danger, in full knowledge of the fact that bitcoin (to which she claims he has ties) is often used by drug and weapons dealers.
She took absolutely no responsibility or whatsoever in her reporting. This is extremely bad if you're particularly a 64 year old just doing his thing.
Now just reverse the genders and imagine the feminist outrage. I haven't noticed a single feminist organization taking a stand on this issue.Now just imagine the outrage if someone actually did the same to the reporter.
When I asked about this to one of the online feminist groups, the reply was along the lines of "Oh, people do it all the time to women. For example, Adria Richards. This is nothing new and we don't need to be outraged about this." (Their logic is that just because this has happened to women in the past, the males of the present deserve this kind of punishment)
Yet feminism stands for equality, they say. And not all feminists are like that. And yet the "for equality" feminists are yet to do anything about this lousy reporter.
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[ 27.7 ms ] story [ 745 ms ] threadedit: a friend pointed out that I should probably say that I write for nbc news so I'm kind of trashing the competition. This is really just my personal distaste speaking, though.
Looks like Newsweek fucked up.
You might expect to see a settlement given Newsweek's backtracking.
[I'm not a lawyer. This isn't even close to being legal advice.]
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2013/04/25/boston-bombing...
Surely, this a is sin greater than whatever Newsweek may have committed.
The entire slam against Newsweek was to liken it to Reddit, so you're just affirming my point.
She took absolutely no responsibility or whatsoever in her reporting. This is extremely bad if you're particularly a 64 year old just doing his thing.
Now just reverse the genders and imagine the feminist outrage. I haven't noticed a single feminist organization taking a stand on this issue.Now just imagine the outrage if someone actually did the same to the reporter.
When I asked about this to one of the online feminist groups, the reply was along the lines of "Oh, people do it all the time to women. For example, Adria Richards. This is nothing new and we don't need to be outraged about this." (Their logic is that just because this has happened to women in the past, the males of the present deserve this kind of punishment)
Yet feminism stands for equality, they say. And not all feminists are like that. And yet the "for equality" feminists are yet to do anything about this lousy reporter.
Whether or not Dorian Nakamoto won the lawsuit or not, Newsweek’s credibility goes down at least a notch.
This will get killed on First Amendment grounds pretty quickly.