Journalism 101

Headline in many newspapers and around the InterWebs:

A-Rod Snitched On Other Players, Report Says -- Fox Sports
A Rod Snitched On Ryan Braun
Alex Rodriguez Snitched on Ryan Braun and Other MLB Players
Et cetera. You get the idea.

Except they're all false.

No one has produced a speck of evidence, not a jot, an iota, a scintilla, that Alex Rodriguez did anything. But because we perceive that ARod is an AHole, we don't worry about such considerations.

Then there are the headlines like this:

ARod Camp Leaked Biogenesis Documents Implicating Ryan Braun, Francisco Cervelli
ARod Camp Leaked Docs Implicating Braun -- Associated Press

And so on.

Except they're false.

What these outlets are reporting is that someone else is reporting this. In fact, it's a 60 Minutes report. What's in the 60 Minutes report? We don't know. Who made this claim to 60 Minutes? We don't know. They were reportedly leaked to Yahoo. What does Yahoo say about this? Nothing

In fact, CBS News cites "unnamed sources." Are these unnamed sources knowledgeable and credible? We don't know. The report doesn't actually get aired until Sunday. So CBS has a vested interest in over-stating the case right now. It's called advertising.

Go ahead and read the stories. They contain one sentence about the allegations and six paragraphs of background. Why only one sentence? Because that's all there is.

Maybe ARod really was involved in a reprehensible leaking campaign. Maybe someone speaking for him leaked documents without his knowledge. Maybe someone is lying to CBS for his own reasons. Right now, all we have is a claim by a news organization of an unknown allegation made by an anonymous source without any supporting evidence. 

That's the only truth we've seen.