He makes a living blogging about Apple. The fact that someone got their hands on an iPhone prototype and sold it to Gizmodo is a major story for his audience. I wouldn't call him commenting on the ethics and legality of it "hyping this thing up" and I have a hard time seeing how it makes him an active participant in the story or in any way responsible for Gizmodo's actions.
Gruber has every right to cover it, no question, but how he covers it is important. He started talking about theft before he had any evidence that this was anything other than the worst drunk phone loss in history. He raised the temperature of the story and he profits from it directly in page views.
So you think Gruber is guilty of uninformed speculation on the legality of Gizmodo's actions. I don't see how that makes him "just as much to blame as Gizmodo". You seem to agree that if the naming and shaming of the engineer was a response to Gruber, it wasn't a reasonable or even logical one, so how can you hold Gruber responsible for it?
Gruber's aggression toward Gizmodo fans the flames - he knows this, he's in the business of page views - and off the story shoots, racking up ad impressions for everyone. The only one to come out badly from this is the poor guy that got a little bit drunk and lost his phone.
Let's pretend that he wasn't trying to fan the flames, wasn't chasing increased page views and wasn't motivated by ad impressions, that he just wanted to share the information he got from his sources and his views on Gizmodo's actions with his readers. In what way could he have done that without giving you the wrong impression?
