So once the information is public the person who publishes it responsible for any and all consequences resulting (even if what he or she posts is factual)?
I agree that it wasn't the best way to handle it (at least publishing the photo wasn't, I'm fine with the rest) but that's different to being held responsible for all actions that follow.
The person in question has responsibility for what they did, the company has responsibility for what they did. There are many points during this whole process where the chain can be broken, not just one.
The person who publishes does not bear all blame - every actor gets his own share for his own decisions. However, the contrary is not true either - the fact that other actors made their own decisions does not absolve the person who publishes from all responsibility. So yes, for her own actions, for publishing the picture, she shares the blame. She chose the nuclear option and decided to judge.
I accept that she has to take her share of the blame doesn't make her judge, jury and executioner.
The company had plenty of other options about how they handled it and firing was in no way a foregone conclusion.
As an aside it is another reminder that we now live in an age where we may all be held to account for things that would otherwise have passed largely unnoticed. There needs to be adjustment on all sides - we all need to start acting in ways we'd be happy to be publicised, we all need to be aware that publicising others behaviour might have wider consequences than we'd initially anticipate, and we all also need to be a little more balanced in our judgement when it comes to behaviour which might be closer to an isolated incident than representative of something more.
in uk, yes... consider recent case of ex politician being wrongly accused of being paedophile by influential twitter users... they are now getting sued. even those that merely retweeted... there is no defensce to claim it was public knowledge already. it was untrue and damaging
I agree that it wasn't the best way to handle it (at least publishing the photo wasn't, I'm fine with the rest) but that's different to being held responsible for all actions that follow.
The person in question has responsibility for what they did, the company has responsibility for what they did. There are many points during this whole process where the chain can be broken, not just one.