Razzoo

The Merchant of Page Views

mikemonteiro:

On Wednesday morning I got a panicked IM from a friend of mine. “Did you hear about the Twitter hack?” No, I hadn’t. He then sent me a link to TechCrunch. “I’m not clicking that.” I said. “No, please.” Fine.

He continued typing in the IM window as I read Michael Arrington’s post, and as I jumped between windows reading about Arrington’s “moral dilemma” my friend was telling me that he’d applied for a job at Twitter a while back. For reasons that are none of anyone’s business but his, he ended up staying at his job. He was now justifiably worried his boss would find out he’d been testing the waters elsewhere.

My friend has a family to support. He’s incredibly talented, great work ethic, and at the end of the day, goes home, has a beer and enjoys his family’s company. He’s not a public figure. And I assume he’s one of many such stories that were delivered into Arrington’s hands on Tuesday evening.

“He says he’s not publishing that type of stuff.”

“That’s a relief.”

That afternoon Arrington threatened to publish everything.

I’ve talked to enough people who’ve convinced me TechCrunch is within the law to publish this stuff. So fine. But having the right to do something doesn’t necessarily make it the right thing to do. Others have compared it to publishing a product leak. We love those, right? Pictures of a new iPhone model? Gimme. So, what’s the problem here? Are we just predisposed to hate Arrington because he behaves like an immoral petulant fratboy? Sure, that’s possible.

But I don’t think that’s all. Let’s go back to the product leak for a second. Usually the act of a rival company or a disgruntled employee, a product leak is business problem.

What Arrington stated he received in his mailbox was a hodge podge of data. Some personal. Some business. Some of it about a very high-profile startup, some of it about the high-profile officers about that startup and some of it about regular working people looking for better jobs, asking about insurance issues, having personal conversations, possibly even revealing medical information to trusted parties.

And Michael Arrington sifted through every one of those bits of data.

He made two piles, one to publish and one to keep in his back pocket and use as a threat.

I’d venture to say that a more ethical human being, even a journalist (look it up Michael), who realizes he’s come across personal data on non-public figures seals it shut and informs the victim of the theft about what’s transpired.

So, did he have a right to publish the business stuff? Sure, probably. (I’m not a lawyer.) That was his pound of flesh to play with. But he couldn’t get his pound of flesh without spilling a lot of blood, and a real journalist doesn’t get this bloody.