[athriren]

if a person who is nominally in a journalistic role ends up producing fabulism and they are then demoted and reassigned, it’s better for that person to lead everyone to believe they were pushed out for irrelevant things many years ago rather than the issue with their work at their workplace that in fact literally just occurred. it’s just confusing, because in any other context i don’t think people would fall for this whataboutism.

a pediatrician who gave babies placebo vaccinations and was then demoted and assigned to “what does being a doctor actually mean” class and then quit, and then told everyone he was fired because people found out he got speeding tickets constantly would be dismissed out of hand once everyone found out about the whole fake baby vaccination thing.

andy is a liar. he purposefully mislead his colleagues when he had good reasons to doubt the credibility of his single source. he produced a work of fiction and the premiere newspaper in the world took it as carte blanche and shared it with the world as the truth. it does not matter what happened with him a decade ago, or three years ago, or even immediately before caliphate. the only relevant thing in this story is that he failed miserably at his only job.

[chmod600]

Why wasn't he forced to resign essentially immediately afterward, then?

[athriren]

he was reassigned and essentially demoted and given the opportunity (along with the cocreator, who is still at the times) to basically do remedial “how not to lie to everyone” and he decided he was not interested.