[jlgaddis]

> And, naturally, he doesn't bother to follow up with the author of the blog post he responded to.

FTA (the first paragraph, actually):

I was initially approached by his supporters, and put in touch with him, to help spread his story … however … once I began researching the story, his detailed blog post began to unravel.

Unless you mean that he should have shared with Aditya Mukerjee his article/accusations/assumptions/whatever and allowed him to respond to or rebut it prior to publishing it.

[jaggederest]

> Unless you mean that he should have shared with Aditya Mukerjee his article/accusations/assumptions/whatever and allowed him to respond to or rebut it prior to publishing it.

That's typically how journalists try to do things, and it's a reasonable thing to do - that's why you almost always see "We attempted to reach X but received no response" or "X was contacted, but had no comment".

The standard is relaxed somewhat for blog posts, I suppose, but at the very least the thing to do would be to send the original author a link to the post as soon as it was posted, asking for comment, and include a note to that effect in the post.

[wpietri]

That's exactly what I mean. He has quotes from sources contradicting the blog posts. He allegedly spend quite a bit of time talking with people. Any real reporter, and hopefully anybody with an interest in publishing a fair article would have called Mukerjee and said, "Hey, let me check some things." But this article treats airline and government claims as fact.