If you’ve ever dealt with ASU baseball head coach Pat Murphy on a regular basis, you know that once in a while, he can be a little bit difficult to work with.
That’s just his nature. He’s not malicious; he’s not mean-spirited; he’s just Pat Murphy.
Regardless, most of you have probably checked out the internet’s biggest pile of sports drivel, Deadspin, to check out the “first hand account” of Pat Murphy roughing up a Muhammad Ali autograph seeker at his charity event last week and then, this morning, Deadspin’s “retraction.”
Here’s at Pitchfork Nation, across Fanster.com and, I hope, across the sports blogosphere, some of us actually hold the truth in high regard and don’t publish potentially damaging stories based solely on hearsay.
I had heard a rumor that Terell Carr may have had a legal run-in yesterday but didn’t publish it because I couldn’t get it confirmed and I don’t publish hearsay. Once the East Valley Tribune ran with it, I knew it was true.
The fact of the matter is that Deadspin does the opposite under what editor AJ Daulerio called their “elastic editorial policy.”
Bunk. What they do on some occasions is publish outright lies.
On my other blog that I maintain with two close friends of mine, No Sir Fans, I vented my frustrations after they went forward with their crusade against ESPN with no more confirmation than the tips they get.
I’m disgusted by what Deadspin does and I hope you are too, especially when they spend the next day trying to lay blame for their irresponsible reporting on the reader who submitted it.
I’m republishing my blog from No Sir Fans here so you can get a more thorough read on my thoughts for that website.
WHY I DON’T READ DEADSPIN…AND WHY YOU SHOULDN’T EITHER
Published: 10/23/09Let’s cut right to the chase.
About three weeks ago, I actively decided to make the personal decision to no longer frequent Deadspin, a popular sports blog.
Since Will Leitch, the site’s former editor, left and the current head honcho, AJ Daulerio, took over, the website, owned by a company called Gawker Media, has devolved into nothing more than a collection of timely fart jokes.
In fact, if you are to visit their site right now as of 9:33 AM Eastern time, three of their first six stories involve underwear, Adrian Peterson’s crotch and the bathrooms at FedEx Field in Washington.
In short, I no longer felt that Deadspin held any sort of real value to me anymore. So I stopped going.
Yesterday, NSF Brett alerted me to some heinous activity going on over on that site. So, for the first time in weeks, I headed over to Deadspin and saw the ruckus for myself.
What I encountered was the lowest form of rumor mongering I have ever encountered anywhere on the internet, let alone the blogosphere.
If you’ve missed the memo over the last few days, ESPN baseball analyst Steve Phillips has been suspended by the network for inappropriate sexual conduct. It’s well known that this isn’t the first time ESPN has gone through something like this.
Apparently, Daulerio tried to contact the Worldwide Leader for a comment, a futile attempt.
However, instead of taking it in stride like the rest of us “journalists” (by the way, Deadspin…not journalism in the slightest sense) or trying to confirm the story using other sources, AJ had a meltdown.
Since the tenuous connection between rumor and fact for accuracy’s sake has been a little eroded here, well, it’s probably about time to just unload the inbox of all the sordid rumors we’ve received over the years about various ESPN employees. Chances are, at this point, there’s some truth to them.
This is, without a doubt, the most egregious breach of ethics I have seen in a LONG time.
First off, does Deadspin even realize that people are, you know, reading their site? Gawker Media claims that their sports arm gets over 600,000 hits per day, something I don’t doubt.
But does Gawker or Deadspin, or for that matter Daulerio, even know the meaning of the word libel?
Through the rest of Wednesday, Daulerio “outed” ESPN personality Erik Kuselias as having an affair with fellow on-air talent Stephania Bell and marketing head Katie Lacey for “sleeping her way to the top” of both Pepsi Co. and ESPN.
All of this, of course, is based on nothing more than “tips” and e-mails he has received. Daulerio ADMITS that he wasn’t even checking into those tips and just publishing them in some sort of frenzied attempt to get back at ESPN for not giving him a comment on the Steve Phillips situation.
If Brandon, Brett and I, all who hold communications and journalism Bachelor’s degrees, had a dime for every “no comment” we’ve received, we’d all be living on our own islands in the Pacific right now.
I wonder if Daulerio and Deadspin even realizes that if any single one of their allegations is false, they’ll be sued so quickly that they’ll have their collective thumbs up their butts whistling Dixie.
There’s a funny thing about libel: it’s a tough case to win as a plaintiff. However, if Kuselias, Lacey or anyone else from ESPN decides to sue for defamation, they’ll win. Hands down.
You see, the two main points on proving libel are showing that a publication was negligent in it’s reporting (in the case of a private individual) or had actual malice towards the subject or person (in the case of a public figure).
Since Kuselias, for example, is a household name for most sports fans, he’d have to prove that Daulerio was out to get him. Did you see that quote earlier in this story? That’s proof enough.
This kind of gross negligence and total disregard for fairness and accuracy in reporting makes me nauseous. If AJ Daulerio wants to claim that they’re just a “blog” and they’re not actually a journalistic entity, he’s jaded.
Deadspin’s own site meter shows that 39,000 people have visited the website since I started writing this blog. You know what that means? Like it or not, people are coming to your site, AJ, for legitimate information. You’re a SOURCE, now, not just a mouthpiece. Your own growth has accomodated that fact.
I know that us here at No Sir Fans are small potatoes compared to Deadspin and I know my diatribe here will not effect real change toward’s the public’s attitude toward it. However, I’ve removed Deadspin from our list of sites we suggest you read based on the fact that it’s clear that their editorial staff has no regard for truth or accuracy.
And once they get sued, I’ll be in the first row of the courtroom rooting for the Plaintiff.
