Tina Brown, the former editor of Newsweek, told Bloomberg TV on Friday, "I am so glad I'm not the editor," when asked about the consequences for Newsweek if its revelation that the inventor of Bitcoin is actually a 64-year-old Southern California man turns out to be false.
In an interview with the Associated Press yesterday, Dorian Nakamoto said he was not the creator of Bitcoin and that he hadn't heard of it until three weeks ago when his son said Leah McGrath Goodman, the author of the Newsweek story, got in touch with him.
McGrath Goodman, in an interview with Bloomberg later Friday, said, "I find her comments not to be very friendly to Newsweek. I have a problem with the way she spoke about it. There's a back story to that and she knows there is one. The fact that she made that comment was bad manners on her part."
When asked if Brown had been briefed on the story or whether she saw it before it was published, McGrath Goodman said, "No, of course not. There's a back story to the relationship between Tina Brown and Newsweek. We need to acknowledge that and not treat her like an objective source because she's not."
McGrath Goodman stood behind the story, saying, "Our forensic research led to him. ... We can not find any reason to not continue asking if this man is the man."
Brown was the editor of Newsweek from when IAC acquired it in late 2010 for a dollar to when it was sold to IBT media in August. Brown left IAC in September to found a live events production company, Tina Brown Live Media.