How ESPN crapped the bed on the Nevin Shapiro story

I've always been a Whitlock fan. Lately, he seems more interested in being a media critic and a celebrity than being a journalist/columnist.

That's unfortunate...

 

Why? Journalists have an enormous amount of power. They need policing just as much as anyone else. And, particularly in sports, there's a derth of any prominent voices consistently challenging and questioning the conventional wisdom about media practices. As you, yourself, has pointed out, Whitlock is one of the few big names to challenge ESPN (probably because most of the other "journalists" appearing on the network are far too interested in being "celebrities", as you called Whitlock, and don't want to risk losing their chance to be on Around the Horn, etc.)

 

As I've said before, I applaud Whitlock for calling ESPN out.

TJ Simers was fired from ESPN for doing something similar.

 

His criticism of Robinson's story, though, was shallow and absurd and off-point and basically contrarian for the sole purpose of being contrarian, with nothing behind it. It was Bayless-like.

 

Well-said.

 

What happens if Whitlock turns out to be right as he was on Bonds and Duke stories?

 

Or, you know, wrong like he was with Sean Taylor-musta-beena-thug?

 

Whitlock has invited Robinson onto his podcast (on which he is always quite gracious to even those guests he vehemently disagrees with). Robinson has yet to respond.

 

Well he was right about Duke and Bonds.

 

I could think of many people who were better equipped - as writers and possibly as thinkers - to dissect Robinson's story than Jason Whitlock. But those folks are often too busy scurrying to their blogs or radio shows to fume over Miami and fawn over Robinson's work.

At the risk of raising the ire of Robinson's many champions - I submit that if you "won" a competition to do a story with a willing snitch, and had 11 months to write it, you'd do OK, too - let's look at just one entry in the Miami story:

http://sports.yahoo.com/investigations/news;_ylt=Al.vabfEZxpyWl_yUuJnY3VRMuB_?slug=ys-orlando_franklin_allegations

<i>Miami booster Nevin Shapiro alleges he provided multiple extra benefits to Orlando Franklin during his career with the Hurricanes. Among the benefits he claimed to have provided:

• Food, drinks and entertainment at Shapiro’s $6 million Miami Beach mansion on multiple occasions.

• Drinks and VIP access in nightclubs on multiple occasions.

• Bounties for plays against defensive linemen.

• Meals at Miami-area restaurants including a February 2007 dinner at Italian eatery Grazie.

Corroborating account

• Yahoo! Sports acquired Shapiro’s February 2007 American Express black card statement showing a charge of $1,099.32 for the Grazie dinner Shapiro said was attended by Franklin and multiple players.

• One source corroborated Shapiro entertaining Orlando Franklin with drinks and VIP access in nightclubs.

<b>In Shapiro’s words</b>

• “He was at my house at least 10 to 15 times. Maybe even more. Clubs, pay for play – bounties on defensive linemen because he was an offensive lineman. No women. He was part of that most recent crop that was in my house on a consistent basis.”</i>


Other than Shapiro, Yahoo provides no source placing Franklin at the dinner or accepting bounties. A bill would mean nothing in a court of law. We all know this. Chances are good that many of your editors would look highly askance at such an accusation. That's why Whitlock quotes in his story:

<i>“(Shapiro) is a convicted felon and a proven liar. Using a guy like that as your key witness, the standard, the bar, has to be set so high that anything less than documented solid proof has to be set aside," Anderson said. “If I put in a complaint to a government agency that I’m relying on a convicted liar and the people corroborating his story are mostly anonymous, they would laugh in our face. If I was to take this to The New York Times or even the New York Post, they would laugh me out of the room. What he put in that story wouldn’t fly. No way. Not ever.”</i>

This is not an illegitimate or even small point, guys. It's not good enough for Whitlock to make a point, of course - his rant is guilty of the same desperation to get noticed so long as he accuses Robinson of the same - but it is a reasonable. Either the allegations are allowed to stand against some of these players because Shapiro says so - which, IMO, is a real risk - or Yahoo is still filling in the blanks of its proof. If the latter is true, well, that's the privilege of the Web, I guess, to have an ever-changing "official version" of the story that refutes concerns by modifying a HTML code.

We can obviously have a conversation about whether Yahoo was too willing to let sources stay anonymous, or why Shapiro apparently had no boundaries except drugs - which would of course land him - and perhaps players - in more legal trouble. But I sense the culture of journalists today is so yearning to do good work, or even be seen to be doing good work, that all work is lionized and held up with only minor examination or a kind of reflexive "who are you to question?" mindset that Whitlock so loves to assail.

I believe it's true that Whitlock is a Bayless-style contrarian who makes a living off occasionally being right via cynicism. But he generally makes that great living because so few others even dare to be objective about journalistic work because of the resulting backlash. We have sports talk radio today because of that, too.

 

As usual Alma, well stated.

 

What Boom said.