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Pitino Mulled Plans To Sue Boston Newscaster
A lesson in ethics keeps me in
line
Ken Ford
Last week my faith in what journalism is supposed to be
all about was
renewed, and it came at my expense.
Here's the story ...
I submit my column and never am I asked what I'm going to
write about.
Also, never, ever am I told what to write about. The next
day, what I
submit, you read. The only exception is when I'm
particularly
long-winded. Then, the column is edited according to the
space
available.
Several years ago, when I started this "gig," I assured
sports editor
Mike Silva that whenever I put something in using the
term "my sources
tell me" that he could print it because I would never
jeopardize the
paper or him and we shook hands on it and the trust was
formed and
it's resulted in a pretty good marriage.
Silva, knowing that I'm hooked into the sports
information highway, ran
with everything I have submitted, trusting that I would
keep my end of
the bargain.
Then came a snippet regarding two Boston athletes that I
submitted
several weeks ago. When it did not appear the next day, I
shrugged it
off thinking that the space was not available. I didn't
call Mike and he
didn't call me. I figured I would re-submit this tasty
morsel of scoop,
which brings us to last week when Silva went out of his
way to pick up
my column.
It's a weekly 10-minute visit where we just shoot the
breeze and Mike
trudges off to the Herald News to start another day of
what I consider to
be a thankless job. My editor seemed a little uneasy as
he mentioned
that he did not print what I had written. He said that,
naturally, his main
concern was for the paper, but he was also worried about
my credibility
and also the fact that the manner in which I craftily
wrote it would be
perceived by you readers as a "tease."
What Mike was trying to say, but didn't, was that he felt
it was reckless
journalism and he was right, because while I indeed did
have one very
good source on the tidbit, I clearly did not do my
homework and
research it a little more. I think that Mike was uneasy
because he felt I
might be upset because of the trust we had formed. He was
wrong,
because in reality what he had done was give me a lesson
in journalism
ethics 101.
This business of reporting is at an all-time low,
reaching the depths of
the Hard Copy, Inside Edition, internet lies that rule
society. Last year
on the internet a story appeared about Drew Bledsoe
having a fling
with a girl friend during the Patriots' bye week. The
Boston papers and
talk radio picked it up and ran with it and Bledsoe went
bonkers, as well
he should, because it never happened.
For the better part of the last month of the hockey
season it was wildly
printed that Pat Burns would be fired after the season.
The writers used
terms like, "sources," "people close to the
organization," etc. On the
edition WBZ TV's Sports Final that aired on the Sunday
night of the last
hockey game, Bob Lobell had three guest panelists from
the media who
assured the audience that Burns would be fired within
days.
They all said they had "sources," the usual cop-out for
shabby
reporting. Several weeks before the NBA season ended, a
reporter
from Channel 7 went on the air and declared that
according to
"sources," Rick Pitino would be taking the head coaching
job at either
Kentucky or North Carolina, despite Pitino's calling the
report a lie.
\ Channel 7 sports director Gene Lavanchy came on the
next night and
said that not only was the station sticking to its story,
he boldly threw
UNLV into the mix.
Mean Gene then went on Boston Radio and stood by the
story, which
incensed Pitino so much that for the first time in his
life he considered a
lawsuit. Howard Manly of the Boston Globe took Lavanchy
to task for
shoddy reporting and the thing got very ugly, with media
types actually
attacking each other.
Lavanchy called Pitino, but he was told that the coach
would not talk to
him until his lawyer reviewed the television and radio
tapes of
Lavanchy's assertions. Pitino did call Lavanchy back and
told him that
he was very disturbed at the outright lies that
Lavanchy's station was
reporting. The funny part of the whole thing is that
Pitino didn't even
know what Lavanchy looked like because not only does he
not read the
Boston papers, he also does not watch Boston sports
programs, and
that's the truth.
Pitino decided to take the high road and not go after
Lavanchy, but he
did say at a press conference that the flat-out lies
being reported by
Lavanchy and others should and must stop, and he's right.
The
problem is that it won't because all over America, this
type of reckless
reporting has become the norm rather than the exception.
The war
between the print and electronic media to get a story at
any cost has
escalated to unimaginable proportions.
In newsrooms in Anytown, USA, editors are under the gun
to beat the
opposition; ditto the television and radio stations. The
new credo
seems to be, "Don't let the facts get in the way of a
good story." Where
does that leave you, the reader, viewer and listener? No
one seems to
care, which brings me back to that handshake I had with
the Herald
News sports editor Mike Silva. It was based on trust.
What it boils down to is that when a columnist such as
myself writes an
opinion column, I'm safe because it's my opinion, but
when I start giving
out snippets where from time to time I use the term
"according to
sources," there must be a moral and ethical
responsibility on my part to
make sure it's accurate. And if by chance what I write
appears to be a
"tease," then you the reader must be protected from
reading it and I as
the writer must be protected and not allowed to put
reckless statements
into print.
That's where Silva steps in with a resounding voice
similar to Perry
White's yell of "Stop the presses." Sadly, there aren't
too many Silvas in
this business, and while my snippet was sourced, it was
too
controversial, too mean-spirited and not factual enough
to allow it to be
digested by you, the reader.
All I can say is you are very, very fortunate to have a
guy from the "old
school" looking out and making sure that you are indeed
reading the
sports section of the Herald News and not the National
Enquirer.
***
Doc Rivers was named coach of the year in the NBA and
deservedly
so, however, if I had a vote I would have made it a tie
between "Doc"
and Phil Jackson.
If James Naismith were alive he would take his peach
basket and go
home rather than watch the Knicks play Miami.
Ken Ford, alias Jersey Red, writes a weekly column for
The Herald
News.