Again, that is speculation. "What ifs" are not useful here.
As "news" outlets, I expect both sites to corroborate stories before posting them. If they don't, they are effectively tabloids. Posting allegations like this is the definition of tabloid journalism.
There are too many people involved in this story for me to believe that zero of them were reachable for comment. TechCrunch only vaguely mentions "awaiting comment from GitHub", which could mean anything.
I do think it is irresponsible to publish such a story without any corroboration because it implicates several people directly and an entire company's work environment with nothing more than one person's word.
The whole story could be true, but the fact is no one knows; TechCrunch and Valley Wag certainly don't.
But again, you are proposing that all power be given to the larger, more powerful entity. And I totally disagree about the usefulness of "what ifs". Without "what ifs" we would all be stuck wandering around waiting for food to fall from a tree in front of us.
We only have the luxury of observing one "version" of events (unless you can hop between multiverses). Therefore, the only way we have to evaluate past events is by asking "what if" questions.
What if TechCrunch hadn't picked up the story? Basically no one would have heard about it and Github quite possibly wouldn't have felt the need to respond or investigate (maybe they still would have, another "what if", but they wouldn't have been under as much pressure).
Something went down. I'm not saying we should just lynch the accused parties and move on. But I am saying that often the only way for a small actor to get attention is for a news outlet to pick up his or her story. And if they refuse to publish without some kind of official confirmation, then very few such stories will be printed, because the larger, more powerful entity will quash them with silence.
Again, that is speculation. "What ifs" are not useful here.
As "news" outlets, I expect both sites to corroborate stories before posting them. If they don't, they are effectively tabloids. Posting allegations like this is the definition of tabloid journalism.
There are too many people involved in this story for me to believe that zero of them were reachable for comment. TechCrunch only vaguely mentions "awaiting comment from GitHub", which could mean anything.
I do think it is irresponsible to publish such a story without any corroboration because it implicates several people directly and an entire company's work environment with nothing more than one person's word.
The whole story could be true, but the fact is no one knows; TechCrunch and Valley Wag certainly don't.