Is Doyel dissing Reilly here?

Couldn't have been much of a "dumb" question if Dorsey then did an entire rant on the overrated-underrated issue. Dorsey just chose not to answer Reilly's original question when his coach was beside him on the dais. The player then felt no such restraint in the less formal breakout setting. Again, Doyel owes Reilly thanks, not a knife in the back.

 

So that's the difference, that the second comment probably isn't true? That's not our call to decide if something is true or not, it just matters that the athlete said it.

 

It was just a delirious team bullshitting around with each other. You're gonna quote guys who aren't even talking to you???

 

So Doyel thinks Chris Douglas-Roberts is an expert on the concept of baiting? He must.

I think it was just the opposite: Reilly called Dorsey on his bullshit. You notice that Dorsey's very next answer was a lot more honest.

 

Browsing through all the threads from the last few months and there was one (which I forgot to link) where Doyel got into it with Bill Conlin, too. Is this a regular schtick with Doyel? (because I don't pay close attention to what he writes.) "Lessee which reporter I can call out to prove a point <i>this</i> week!"

 

SoCal, you don't really think journalism is just about reporting and quoting what people say when they know they're being interviewed, do you? Dick Cheney probably didn't expect to be quoted when he told Pat Lehey to "go fuck himself" but it was news. And Karl Rove probably didn't expect Ron Suskind to quote him when Suskind overheard him from outside his office screaming to and aide, "we will fuck him, and we will fuck him bad" about a political opponent.

If we only agree to quote things said in designated interviews and press conferences, then we become stenographers, not reporters. Teams, politicians, public officials and businessmen (and women) want to only be "quoted" in certain situations because they want to control the message. It's our job to find out the truth.

As Milo said, you probably wouldn't write that two high school kids called their coach an asshole if he ripped them after a bad loss, but you might write it in the context of a larger story if the kids were threatening to quit the team and the coach was possibly going to get fired because of the way he treated his players.

What if, instead of calling Wayne Gretzky a fag, a bunch of NHL players celebrated in their locker room by calling Anson Carter a monkey? Or a n----r? Would you ignore it because it didn't happen in a formal interview? Of course not. It's why you weigh things like that individually, sometimes sacrificing future access for the readers' right to know.

 

Alma: Reilly wasn't calling out Dorsey on his BS, because Dorsey hadn't been asked specifically about Oden yet. Reilly was throwing chum into the water to see if Dorsey would bite. Dorsey didn't.

Milo: Conlin wrote to me in my hate mail, and I responded in my hate mail. I didn't go looking for that one, but if I'm supposed to back away, well, no.

As for the title question of this thread: No I wasn't dissing Reilly. I was writing about Dorsey vs. Oden and getting every bit of detail I could into the story. I included Reilly's name because that's a name/detail that most readers would recognize.

 

gregg,

If Guy A says Guy B is "a lot overrated" hasn't he spoken specifically about Guy B, even if he hasn't specifically been asked about it?

Here comes a lot of posts to this thread.

 

Alma, you weren't there in San Antonio so you don't know, and apparently you didn't read my story -- the one we're discussing -- closely enough to get it, so here you go:

1. Reilly baited Dorsey first. In the main interview room. Dorsey declined.

2. Ten minutes later in his breakout interview room, in response to my question on the opportunity for Dorsey to impress the NBA with a good game against Oden, Dorsey volunteered that Oden was "a lot overrated."

 

So it's beneath you to ask a direct question like Reilly did, but you don't hesitate to use comments on the very same subject. Got it.

 

gregg,

Ah, I get it now. My apologies. Because you lead with Dorsey said, then double back and explain that before that, Rick Reilly tried to get him to say what he said later, I read it as a follow-up. My error.

Under that chronology, Reilly was clumsily baiting him. And you asked a similiar question in a more clever way, because it produced the desired result.

 

But there's a line between fair game and eavesdropping. I was new in a job and at lunch I was seated at a table next to where the mayor was eating with his divorce lawyer. It was a very entertaining lunch indeed and I did give the paper's editor a few of the high points as background, but, no, we didn't write it. Aside from the fairness issue, we also have to weigh whether reporting an overheard private conversation turns off more readers than it serves. In this case, the nation's survival does not depend on us reporting a private conversation -- is reporting it worth adding to the public's perception that reporters are scum? We can say it's a relatively innocuous comment and it's "color," but if it's so unimportant, why add to the perception that all of us are just like the National Enquirer people, digging through celebs' garbage?