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Comment by betageek | Hacker News Reader

My problem with this post is that Gruber acts like he isn't involved in this whole circus - he's just as much to blame as Gizmodo.

I'd suggest one of the main reasons that Gizmodo published the guys name is that Gruber implied immediately that they stole the prototype (http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/04/19/gizmodo-rumors) without giving any evidence - not really the act of a 'ethical' journalist. It's fine to decide that you think it's theft if you go by the letter of the law (AFAIK Gruber isn't a lawyer, so it's just an uneducated opinion) but to stoke the flames and then be 'offended' is pure hypocrisy.

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(AFAIK Gruber isn't a lawyer, so it's just an uneducated opinion)

That's a bit harsh; there's a large difference between an "uneducated opinion" and a "carefully researched assessment by a non-lawyer". Based on your criteria, no journalist could ever write about any topic but journalism.

Based on what I've seen, especially in science journalism, there are a lot of journalists who should be topic-restricted in this way.

Considering no charges have been filed, it's far from clear that anything illegal happened.

I'd suggest one of the main reasons that Gizmodo published the guys name is that Gruber implied immediately that they stole the prototype

How is that a valid response? Leaving aside your mischaracterization of what Gruber actually wrote, what does publishing the guys name, not to speak of his picture and other information, get them that couldn't have been accomplished without the personal details, aside from a bunch of page views?

My point is not that Gizmodo did the right thing (far from it) but that Gruber is actively involved in hyping this thing up. I don't think its a mischaracterisation to say he implied it was stolen, it's right there in the text of the post.

He makes a living blogging about Apple. The fact that someone got their hands on an iPhone prototype and sold it to Gizmodo is a major story for his audience. I wouldn't call him commenting on the ethics and legality of it "hyping this thing up" and I have a hard time seeing how it makes him an active participant in the story or in any way responsible for Gizmodo's actions.

Gruber has every right to cover it, no question, but how he covers it is important. He started talking about theft before he had any evidence that this was anything other than the worst drunk phone loss in history. He raised the temperature of the story and he profits from it directly in page views.

So you think Gruber is guilty of uninformed speculation on the legality of Gizmodo's actions. I don't see how that makes him "just as much to blame as Gizmodo". You seem to agree that if the naming and shaming of the engineer was a response to Gruber, it wasn't a reasonable or even logical one, so how can you hold Gruber responsible for it?

Gruber's aggression toward Gizmodo fans the flames - he knows this, he's in the business of page views - and off the story shoots, racking up ad impressions for everyone. The only one to come out badly from this is the poor guy that got a little bit drunk and lost his phone.

Let's pretend that he wasn't trying to fan the flames, wasn't chasing increased page views and wasn't motivated by ad impressions, that he just wanted to share the information he got from his sources and his views on Gizmodo's actions with his readers. In what way could he have done that without giving you the wrong impression?

He's as much to blame? Did he have in his posession something which did not belong to him? To be sure, that is where his outrage is. Someone had something that dis not belong to them. They sold that thing. The recipient had every reason to believe that the item did not belong to the seller.

It doesn't matter if he found the thing next to spare thing on the street. The finder knew who owned it (who was carrying it) and did not contact them. The buyer knew damned well that it belonged to Apple and not some random guy--they're in the tech journalism (apologies to ethical journalists) business for Christ's sake. I can't think of many people more qualified to know that the phone was property of Apple, Inc.

And that makes it wrong.

You're being disingenuous. Gruber didn't imply that they stole the prototype. He reported from his contacts at Apple that Apple considered the phone stolen rather than lost.

Also, just because Gruber isn't a lawyer doesn't make his opinion uneducated.

How is that not implying it was stolen???

I thought a legal education was a pretty lengthy process - I stand corrected.

So is a degree in journalism, and yet here we are.

I ended up teaching lots of journalism majors Comp Sci 101/102 when I was in grad school. They took my course in droves because they thought it was the easiest way to get through the math requirement, which tells me that a lot of those students hadn't yet acquired a fact-checking habit!

Given what I saw, I should not be surprised that there is a lot of bad science journalism out there.

It could be that the department recommends that they take the class, not that they chose to take it themselves; many departments at my college recommend taking CSC120 to fill a prereq.

I'd suggest one of the main reasons that Gizmodo published the guys name is that Gruber implied immediately that they stole the prototype

How does that support the case that the phone was lost? Publishing the name of the guy who found the phone might support your case, but publishing the name of the phone's owner isn't helpful - you can steal something from a known owner.

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