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Do you get a better trophy if you win the Super Bowl by a larger margin?
Motion to either remove the poll from this topic, or change the poll to "Is this the stupidest thing ever"
You guys have it completely backwards. The rescinded material was in an ESPN Boston reaction piece, not the column itself. In other words a guy with a local focus tried to poke some holes in the national story with a response and that response had to be edited. The original piece hasn't been touched- several ex-Patriot employees acknowledge that the team stole play sheets.
The text says "visiting locker room," i.e. they did this at Gillette. The personnel and security cameras they were "sneaking by" and "avoiding" were their own, or those of hotels. Big hotels aren't exactly the Pentagon. If high school kids on field trips can get away with smoking weed and fingerbanging in the stairwells I'm pretty sure an NFL team can get away with rummaging through conference rooms and whatnot.
It's really fantastic how in the heads of the opponents ( and apparently fans and media ) the Patriots really are. Boogeymen everywhere. Love the SI piece.
In a piece where the vast majority of "sources" were unnamed. Back in the days of actual journalism, this kind of thing would have been laughed out of a newsroom. Now, it's common practice.
Correct, no gray area. The Van Natta/Wickersham report hasn't been touched or even disputed by anyone other than desperate homers in denial. Not even the Patriots' team statement in response to the piece refutes it. The Pats stole play sheets. Period, full stop.
Exactly. He obviously doesn't know journalism. The journalist often puts his entire career at stake with those sources,
Nobody is accusing the Patriots of a crime, which is the context where proof beyond a reasonable doubt is required (the notion being that it is better to let the guilty go free than to imprison the innocent).
Why have team ball crews? If the NFL wants this airtight, simply have the ball crews be NFL staff that travels with the refs. Could probably reduce the number of steps dramatically.
Did I say it lessened their titles? Nope.
I thought accusers meant that this stuff went down in Gillette Stadium, not on the road. Would assume Gillette Stadium security would know not to interfere with Bob Kraft's employees. And heck ... it could be stadium security staffers themselves doing the dirty work.
Nowadays it's more like a journalist will build an entire career on having access to and being a stenographer for anonymous sources in power. It's an abuse.
You mean in the heads of people that used to work for them that are making many of these claims?
Devil's Advocate: since those employees didn't go on the record or use their names ... those accounts could well have been fabricated from whole cloth.
That's because everything was anonymous. So handy. Nobody can follow up, because you don't know who to ask.
I have a hard time believing that. We're not talking about Mike Florio or Chris Mortenson here. This is maybe the best investigative reporter in sports. He did the post-Ray Rice expose on the Ravens that they initially challenged and then backed off. He did that crazy Jerry Jones profile. He did the Bobby Riggs-Billie Jean King match-fixing thing. To my knowledge none of his work has ever had to be rescinded. He's 51 and well established. He's not gonna throw all of that away by making up sources so he can trash the Patriots like some sort of hateful blogger.
Denial is a powerful thing, huh? All of a sudden a common journalistic practice is scandalous mudslinging and maybe the best reporter in the game is a sleazy peddler of half-truths even though the Pats themselves haven't disputed the story. Sure, makes sense.
Sorry. Stepped outside deflategate for a second. I was talking about the common journalistic practice. It's loathsome.
II hope you're right. Is there a real blowback, though, in 2015 if the things an anonymous source provides one day are later (somehow) proved completely untrue?
That's why assignment editors, editors, editors-in-chief, publishers and even the reporters themselves, implement source checking in the world of journalism.
Keep in mind we're not talking about one anonymous source. Most respectable journalists wouldn't even report something like that with one anonymous source. The story says that "several of them acknowledge" that this happened. I honestly can't even imagine the circumstances that would lead a bunch of ex-employees to conspire to fool a reporter like that, especially one who would look into why they left the team and whether they have any reason to lie, as Van Natta would do. And he certainly wouldn't just make it up- the cost/benefit there would make zero sense. His life's work would be called into question and his career going forward would be ruined if he did that, and it's not like he needed this story to "make it big" or something.
How do you check a source? Those editors, et al ... how DO they know what's up? What are THEIR sources that they are checking against?
I hate to undermine anything about this, but Rolling Stone wants a word with you.
No, I mean the media that thinks drudging up an 8 year old report, then backing it with years of unfounded / unproven claims is a good idea, and fans like yourself that already have a belief and find unnamed sources and unproven claims to be irrefutable evidence of your beliefs.sho nuff said:
that's just it - ESPN is not, IMO - a pristine example of journalistic integrity.Old Smiley said:
be even more believable if the source had a scrap of evidence, like a playsheet kept for posterity. Even Matt Walsh kept a couple spygate tapes for later use. He even "indicated" they may contain a walkthrough of the Rams practice.Doug B said:
ESPN, no. Don Van Natta, however, absolutely is.
I don't even care about physical evidence -- that's too high a bar to set for simply informing common sense. No one's risking imprisonment here ... courtroom standards are not needed.
Forget Simmons, the actual Patriots' statement refuted hardly any specifics other than a technicality. Comical.
And fuel for the deniers to keep looking at the smoke and declaring there cannot be fire...just can't be.
1000x this. If someone really had the goods on the Pats and had an axe to grind, why wouldn't they sell the story to Deadspin etc... themselves instead of being an "anonymous source" for Outside the Lines?
yes.
Two pretty huge reasons these employees need anonymity:
So, using this type of logic, the statement that why haven't people come out publicly against Belichick? Logic would dictate that if they had something on him, they would. That they haven't is solid unassailable proof they have nothing.
It's kind of unfortunate ... Adams is probably going to go through annual IRS audits for the rest of his life. And hopefully, he is burning his trash.
