I keep thinking of lynching. In the real world, I'd like to think we'd all be against lynching, where a group of people rush towards somebody who appears to be guilty (regardless of if they are or not) and take it upon themselves to enact a brutal "justice". Even if the accused was ultimately guity, it's better to let proper authorities deal with the situation and have sober, calm judge & jury look at the facts and decide what society has determined up until that point is right. Maybe what Tim sensed when initially apprised of the situation was a lynch-mob mentality going against a high-profile reviewer and as a publisher of integrity rose to defense his writer against the mob, and when the charges were shown eventually to be true, he withdrew his support but continued to dislike mob rule which has tempered his response. That seems the most straightforward and human reading of the order of events to me.