I think even this under-plays the fact-checking point. It’s very difficult for external observers to evaluate these sorts of situations, particularly when there’s fierce pushback from the accused party. The level of rigour in fact-checking even secondary details is one heuristic people can use to evaluate the journalist’s case. If the accused can point out a litany of errors in the post it makes it much harder to trust the bigger claims. It also makes it immensely harder to persuade those sympathetic to the accused.
Habryka’s suggestion in comments elsewhere that this level of fact-checking is basically too much to ask for seems to miss this.
In that spirit, I feel I should point out that for Alice and/or Chloe the compensation was eventually switched to cash on their request. I don’t think this at all undermines your points—it’s clear that Kat thinks the in-kind compensation structure was an amazing offer that Alice and Chloe should have felt lucky to receive, and that her agreeing to the switch to cash was going above and beyond as an employer. But it seems important to make sure people don’t get an inaccurate impression, or at least don’t think you have one.
I think even this under-plays the fact-checking point. It’s very difficult for external observers to evaluate these sorts of situations, particularly when there’s fierce pushback from the accused party. The level of rigour in fact-checking even secondary details is one heuristic people can use to evaluate the journalist’s case. If the accused can point out a litany of errors in the post it makes it much harder to trust the bigger claims. It also makes it immensely harder to persuade those sympathetic to the accused.
Habryka’s suggestion in comments elsewhere that this level of fact-checking is basically too much to ask for seems to miss this.
In that spirit, I feel I should point out that for Alice and/or Chloe the compensation was eventually switched to cash on their request. I don’t think this at all undermines your points—it’s clear that Kat thinks the in-kind compensation structure was an amazing offer that Alice and Chloe should have felt lucky to receive, and that her agreeing to the switch to cash was going above and beyond as an employer. But it seems important to make sure people don’t get an inaccurate impression, or at least don’t think you have one.