Reuters fires editor accused of hacking conspiracy

Matthew Keys, pictured, deputy social media editor, himself announced his dismissal. “Just got off the phone. Reuters has fired me, effective today. Our union will be filing a grievance. More soon,” he wrote on Twitter.

Keys, 26, is alleged to have provided the hacking group Anonymous with login details to access the computer system of The Tribune Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times. The hacker used the information to change a headline on a Times story, a federal indictment in California alleged.

The offence occurred in December 2010. Keys had been fired two months earlier from his job as a web producer at a Sacramento television station owned by Tribune. Reuters hired him in January 2012. On 14 March this year, following his indictment, it suspended him with pay from his New York-based job. Thomson Reuters spokesman David Girardin confirmed that Keys was “no longer with the company”.

During his suspension Keys continued his social media activity, posting links and comments several times a day. He said his dismissal “wasn’t unexpected”. Reuters did not mention the indictment as grounds for dismissal. The company told him it did not agree with some of the coverage he provided on his own account about the manhunt for the Boston marathon bombings suspects last week. He told the website Politico that was one of the reasons given for his being fired. Keys tweeted information from Boston police radio scanners that turned out to be wrong. Keys said on Facebook he had stopped posting about the manhunt once he saw reports that police were warning journalists not to tweet from the scanner.

He posted a copy of a “final written warning” he said he received from Reuters in October, which admonished him for mocking a Google executive from a fake Twitter account he had created. The warning said the action demonstrated a “serious lapse of judgment and professionalism that is unbecoming of a Reuters journalist”.

Keys is due to be arraigned in a federal court in Sacramento on Tuesday. Prosecutors say he faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. ■