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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> So everyone who ever worked or met Epstein is guilty by association ?

I think “of interest by association” is more what is going on,and appropriately so.

> Is this what journalism is ? - Naming and Shaming people where there is no crime or unethical act committed.

“investigating and reporting facts related to matters of public interest even before it is clear what the import of those facts are, in part because that both provokes people to come forward with related information and enables additional parties to do their own related inquiries” would be more accurate than your loaded language, but, yes, reporting on matters that provide context to matters already in the public eye (which, in this case, do involve both crimes and other unethical acts) that are not themselves clearly criminal or unethical is an important part of journalism.

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So if some Church pastor gets convicted for sexual abuse of children, Can buzzfeed publish the list of all church going members in the area with their photographs ?

If those church members, as here, received large sums of money from the pastor? Or supported him publicly? 100% yes.

I think it's especially obvious with churches. When a bunch of people get together to fund and empower a guy, they share responsibility for what is done with that power. If that power is used to harm, a factual accounting of who did what seems entirely fair, as does asking them what they have to say for themselves.

Your analogy isn't very good, though, because all of the people mentioned in this article are public figures. They sought out prominent roles in society. They receive significant benefits from the public, either directly or indirectly.

This is not Journalism. Journalism is what Julie Brown did since 2008. This is just Buzzfeed being buzzfeed getting some sure shot clicks.

I'm not going to defend whether this particular instance is good journalism, but Buzzfeed is not Buzzfeed News. A 2017 study in Journalism found Buzzfeed News was comparable to NYT, for what that's worth.

Using a "study in journalism" as an appeal to authority w.r.t. the reputability of a media company is really strange, citation or no.

I wasn't making an appeal to authority, I was noting that, like I said in my first sentence, Buzzfeed and Buzzfeed News aren't the same thing. I then go on to say, for whatever it's worth, at least one study in journalism considered Buzzfeed News to be quite good; I very clearly neither agreed nor disagreed with that decision. It should also be obvious to the reader that there aren't any studies in journalism on the accuracy of Buzzfeed listicles, which would relate back to my original point, that Buzzfeed is not Buzzfeed News, for what it's worth.

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