Journalism and computer programming are fundamentally different pursuits. Computer programming is a perfectly objective activity, the output is totally independ

Journalism and computer programming are fundamentally different pursuits. Computer programming is a perfectly objective activity, the output is totally independent of the work that went into it. Thus, Carmack's work is brilliant, and would remains brilliant despite Carmack being a repentant theif. ReiserFS is still a good filesystem and is still included in the Linux kernel, despite it's author being a convicted murderer. But journalism is different: the activity is subjective and we are required to trust that the journalist (and their editor and publisher etc) isn't out to mislead us (or, more realistically, that we understand their biases and can compensate for them). Thus, the output is much closer linked to the work that went into it. The journalist was in the room, we weren't. We have to trust that the journalist not only accurately quotes what's being said, but accurately represents the context of it. That means that the personal integrity of the journalist is much more important. Plenty of lapses of journalists can be trivially forgiven - youthful theft easily among them. But Hari didn't steal a computer as a kid, he messed with one of the most sacred institutions of journalism: the quote. Even worse, he claimed ignorance: forgiving a journalist who so fundamentally misunderstands his own role as a high-integrity purveyor of truth that he thinks it's cool to mess with quotes is a lot more difficult than forgiving theft (not that it's up to any of us to forgive Carmack, we weren't party to his crime).