Last month, an ordinary woman with an ordinary job discovered that she was the subject of a 3,000-word Washington Post exposé. Her crime? She had worn a tasteless costume to a Halloween party two years earlier. Two of the women who had also attended wanted her punished for it, and with that supposedly journalistic piece, they succeeded. The woman lost her job, her privacy, and her dignity as a result.
About a week later, a young investigative journalist for the Intercept, Lee Fang, was hauled before his publication’s HR department, publicly denounced by his colleagues, and widely accused of racism — all because he had shared a video on Twitter of a black man recounting his experience with black-on-black crime. As penance, Fang had to issue a public apology, admit to insensitivity, and agree not to rock the boat anymore if he wanted to keep his job.
