The NY Times helped rile up the mob that harassed Tim Hunt.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/12/world/europe/tim-hunt-nobe...
They aren't opposed to Internet mobs, just those that don't fit their agenda.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/12/world/europe/tim-hunt-nobe...
They aren't opposed to Internet mobs, just those that don't fit their agenda.
The mob that harassed the pizza shop owner was riled up by a totally false and horrific, incredibly libelous lie.
It was also false, horrific and libellous, and he did lose his job over it. Just because the stick used to beat people with was misogyny instead of cheese pizza, doesn't make the act of spreading false information any less despicable.
Edit: BTW, the fact that our media is now staffed by people who are utterly unable to separate their subjective experience from objective reality should seriously worry you. It should also make you reconsider anything you've heard about what's going on in culture wars online and offline, because I guarantee you, the people covering it do not have the statistical and digital literacy to accurately gauge the size and nature of things.
> Well, now that the dust has cleared and the story has faded from the American press, there’s a postscript that amounts to: “Never mind.” It turns out that, just as Hunt has claimed, the 72-year-old scientist’s comments during a luncheon at a science journalism conference in Korea in June were an awkward self-deprecating joke—greeted with laughter (not the reported “stony silence”) by a mostly female audience. The “Tim Hunt, misogynist scientist” narrative has been falling apart piece by piece over the past month; last week, it was finished off by a snippet of audio recorded by a female attendee and made public by The Times. Now, attention should turn to the real scandal: irresponsible journalism magnified by social media frenzy.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/07/22/sexist_...
Are you suggesting the mob that attacked Tim Hunt was justified?
> In Tim Hunt's case, Tim Hunt actually said the things that were the cause of other people's ire.
As a joke, which (we know from a recording and the reports of other attendees) was well received by the audience in general, save one reporter who saw an opportunity to profit by misrepresenting his remarks.
> Perhaps you can argue that NYT's opinion pages were one sided, but at least they are explicitly labeled as opinion.
One discussion was, the article linked above was not. It claimed quite seriously that Tim Hunt said "female scientists should be segregated from male colleagues".
> The mob that harassed the pizza shop owner was riled up by a totally false and horrific, incredibly libelous lie.
As was the mob that harassed Tim Hunt. The much bigger lie that he was some sort of chauvinist keeping women out of science.
A lie that was exposed by the many women who worked with him and defended him.
I hope, though, that most people would feel the same anger and disappointment that I feel over being misled whether or not it agrees with their views, instead of doubling down on false information in the hopes that spreading it further somehow makes it more real.