Man, this is like stomping on dead mosquitoes -- doesn't take any skill but sure is satisfying.
Here's the A.P. write-up in my newspaper on the Tigers' 5-4 win over Oakland.
Miguel Cabrera hit a go-ahead sacrifice fly in the fifth inning to back Rick Porcello's eighth victory and the Detroit Tigers beat the Oakland A's for a split of their four-game series.
Ahem.
Let's list the individuals elements of stupid involved in this description.
1. Cabrera flied out and got top billing.
2. Ian Kinsler doubled and got to third without Cabrera's help, but was not mentioned.
3. The fifth inning?!
4. Cabrera's momentous out -- did I mention it was in the fifth inning? -- made the score 3-2. Had the Tigers failed to score two more runs they would have lost.
5. Porcello pitched 5 2/3 and allowed 11 baserunners, including six walks. In other words, he stunk.
6. Three middle relievers saved the game by shutting out Oakland over 2 1/3 frames, including bailing Porcello out of a jam in the sixth.
7. Wins shmins: Porcello has pitched roughly average this year.
What a senscient editor would have re-written:
Ian Kinsler wrapped a pair of doubles and scored twice to lead the Detroit Tigers over the Oakland A's for a split of their four-game series. Relievers Gary Kroll, Al Albuquerque and Joba Chamberlain offset a wild performance by starter Rick Porcello to nail down the win.
Showing posts with label sports journalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sports journalism. Show all posts
17 August 2013
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.
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.
06 June 2013
100-Game Suspensions? Yeah, Sure.
If you want to see sports journalism in all its raging, frothy, fulminating glory, take a peek at the coverage of Biogenesis frontman Tony Bosch's upcoming testimony before the sachems of Major League Baseball.
The Story: Twenty-two ballers, most of them Major Leaguers, may be named in documents that Bosch could provide to MLB that would suggest that they had purchased banned performance enhancing drugs. If the evidence is sufficiently strong, baseball could seek to suspend those named for as much as 100 games under the provision that they had committed two offenses -- procuring the banned substances and lying about it. The players' union would inevitably fight the unilateral punishments with all their considerable might, questioning the process, the evidence and the rationale in an appeal that would be arduous and uncertain.
The Broadcast Coverage: ARod. ARod. ARod. ARod. ARod. ARod. Ryan Braun. 100-game suspension! ARod choking. ARod lying. ARod cheating. Ryan Braun. 100-game suspension! ARod. ARod choking. ARod lying. ARod cheating. Ryan Braun. 100-game suspension! ARod talking to pretty women. Ryan Braun. 100-game suspension!
If Bosch's testimony is worth the receipts he'll allegedly hand over, there will be intrigue aplenty in this story, with all the twists and turns of the Amanda Cox murder case. So we'll all be following it. But we're a long, long way from any 100-game suspensions.
For ARod. Or Ryan Braun.
The Story: Twenty-two ballers, most of them Major Leaguers, may be named in documents that Bosch could provide to MLB that would suggest that they had purchased banned performance enhancing drugs. If the evidence is sufficiently strong, baseball could seek to suspend those named for as much as 100 games under the provision that they had committed two offenses -- procuring the banned substances and lying about it. The players' union would inevitably fight the unilateral punishments with all their considerable might, questioning the process, the evidence and the rationale in an appeal that would be arduous and uncertain.
The Broadcast Coverage: ARod. ARod. ARod. ARod. ARod. ARod. Ryan Braun. 100-game suspension! ARod choking. ARod lying. ARod cheating. Ryan Braun. 100-game suspension! ARod. ARod choking. ARod lying. ARod cheating. Ryan Braun. 100-game suspension! ARod talking to pretty women. Ryan Braun. 100-game suspension!
If Bosch's testimony is worth the receipts he'll allegedly hand over, there will be intrigue aplenty in this story, with all the twists and turns of the Amanda Cox murder case. So we'll all be following it. But we're a long, long way from any 100-game suspensions.
For ARod. Or Ryan Braun.
05 August 2010
Lies, Damned Lies and Sports Journalism
From the Associated Press:
Headline: Favre Now Says He Will Play If Healthy
Mankato, Minnn -- Brett Favre's flip-flopping is at full throttle, the surest sign yet that training camp is under way in Minnesota...
I am not a Pakcers fan or hater, a Favre fan or hater, or a Viking fan or hater. However, I despise bad journalism. This isn't bad journalism. It's flat-out lying. The bad journalism happened the previous day when nearly every sports news organization in America reported that Brett Favre said he was retiring.
The actual story was this: someone reported that players and front office types had received text messages from Favre saying he would retire. Favre offered no comment and in the ESPN reports I saw, which accounted for half of SportsCenter (I was on the road and so had cable TV access) they could find not a single person to confirm this report.
Where I come from, that's not a story. Summarized in a sentence, it sounds like this: "There appears to be no evidence supporting rumors that make someone look bad." That's not journalism, that's the Dreyfus Affair.
The next day, Favre denied the report. The Vikings front office denied the report. In other words, by all accounts, it was untrue. This was Scott Van Pelt's apt explanation for ESPN's endless coverage of the non-story: "Forget Tuesday happened."
Did Favre flip-flop? Not at all; he never made the original claim. It was the sports media that flip-flopped in a craven attempt to cover up their collective lack of journalistic integrity. The sports media ran with a story that was false and quite frankly defamatory. And then the next day, reporter Jon Krawczynski and his fellow apologists at the AP attempted to blame Favre for their incompetence by trading on his known penchant for ambivalence.
Any good journalist knows that the best-believed lies are big and bald-faced. In the same story, Krawczynski repeated the false claim that "a day earlier, Favre texted some teammates and Vikings officials...that he planned to retire" without citing a single first-person source, though several players and officials denied it. Then he blamed Favre for creating the mess. The end result is that this completely fabricated event will become part of Favre's permanent life history, to be repeated in every story and every remembrance of the great quarterback.
There are a lot of sports journalists who owe Brett Favre a public apology today. But I'll bet that not one of the hundreds across the country who libeled the Viking QB has even the self-awareness to realize what an incompetent he is.
It's the same thinking (and many of the same people) that allows baseball journalism to remain mired 30 years behind the times in its coverage of that sport.
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