Scientific American faces firestorm after removing blog post about scientist being called a whore

So, its apparently ok to call someone a whore for NOT working for free for your commercial blogging enterprise. This is interesting to me for two reasons. First, its simply inappropriate for someone to call out a person as a whore. There is far too much incivility in online discourse. People say things online, even in direct ‘face to face’ online communications, which they would (we hope) never dream of saying in real life. As to the germ of the issue… Dr Lee was asked to do some blogging, she asked whether and how much remuneration was involved, and declined on hearing ‘nuttin’. Then she gets called a whore (which is odd as if she was doing things just for money…). But why do commercial blogs and online commerce organizations think they can freeride on academics? A few months ago I was asked to do a monthly online one hour virtual meeting room with clients of an investment bank. I asked “how much” and the answer was zippydoozero. I declined and as per here they whined on about how great an exposure it would be for me.
Companies : you operate in a commercial environment. That doesn’t end when you ask Prof Pointyhead to work for you.