There is a clear division to be made between firing someone for what they do on their own time vs. actions they take in the course of their employment for you.
When being a responsible journalist is your job, it's not unreasonable to expect to get fired for not being a responsible journalist.
I think it’s completely unreasonable to fire someone for one instance of wrong behavior (with very narrow exceptions for something like stealing or sexual abuse).
I’m very happy to live in a country where you cannot fire people just like that, even if they do something wrong. You have to give people second chances. I don’t get this “fire them” approach to anything wrong something does.
People make mistakes. That just happens. To always fire people because of that makes no sense to me.
Of course people make mistakes, but it's a mistake to confuse a deliberate and fully informed action with a mistake. The journalist knows Scott's concerns and has plenty of time to think through things and come to a decision, and came to the wrong one.
If I was a janitor and spilled a bucket of water on the floor it would be wrong and cruel to fire me for that mistake. On the other hand, if I saw a customer come in to our store and said "Yo customer, we hate you, get out and never come back!" And then grabbed a bucket of water and dumped it on the customer... Well then I think firing me would make sense. The former was a mistake. The latter is an intentional and deliberate bad action.
If people don’t accept that they made I mistake then yeah, that’s an issue – and one where firing should again become an option, sure (basically that unwillingness to accept that is then the second offense).
I do agree that the situation here is bit more complex since the public is involved.
This seems serious enough that, I think, the challenge is more about the NYT making transparent their process, their decisions and what they did.
I think that’s even more valuable than just firing someone. They should investigate which processes, guidelines, rules, etc. contributed to that behavior and how and wether they plan to change that. They should outline what they communicated to that reporter. They should apologize.
I want an explanation and improvements, not someone to be fired. Also because I think more often than not people who actually did make a mistake are unlikely to do that again.
They could be the problem and actually toxic, sure, that’s always a risk. But I think that’s ok.
I read him as saying the NYT is being "dumb and evil". I think it's an open question if they are dumb or cunning. I think they may intend or prefer a result like this.
When being a responsible journalist is your job, it's not unreasonable to expect to get fired for not being a responsible journalist.