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.

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.