Arrington hinted in his post that there is more to this story than is being revealed:

> I also think VentureBeat should fully disclose any other issues they have that might be affecting their judgement about Y Combinator, but I’ll leave it at that.

from: http://uncrunched.com/2012/09/07/turning-the-drama-down-on-y...

this is starting to become so weird that I believe there must be more to it

edit: that post has a HN thread that was just submitted: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4491894

What a contrast a zoom and filter can have on an image... The actual image is him intently/genuinely listening to what I can only suppose is a question from an audience member of some kind. And the Venture Beat cropped version is supposed to make it look like he's coldly calculating someone's demise.

It's hard to tell, but the image has also been rotated, which makes it seem like he is leaning forward more intently. Click the little "compare" link on the TinEye result to see what I mean:

https://www.tineye.com/search/b2e69b229df764bf6bd92bb4ca65f1...

Oh frig. You should see CNN during election time. The obvious biases last election made my stomach turn.