Should we report a media person's tweet?

Throwing this out there for discussion:

Peter Gammons tweeted about Bubba Starling, the No. 5 overall pick in the baseball draft (Royals) who signed a letter of intent to play football with Nebraska. Aug. 15 is the deadline to sign with the Royals, but he is on campus at Nebraska. He is being held out of football practice until it's known whether he'll accept millions to sign with the Royals or play college football. If he signs with the Royals, he's gone.

Anyway...

Gammons tweets a cryptic message: "Bo Pellini (sic) going off on and threatening Bubba Starling is great news for the Royals."

Local media have a field day with this. Pelini is forced to put out a statement shooting down any acrimony with Bubba and the Starling family. Bubba's dad also denies there is discord.

I agree that if a reporter sees a tweet like that, he or she should follow up and see if there is any merit to it.

The question: Once the reporter does his or her due diligence and checks out the veracity of the tweet, should a tweet like that be given credence if it can't be verified. I mean, the language is vague and there is no source or follow-up by Gammons? Seems like it could set a dangerous precedent if folks regurgitated everything on the twitter threads.

 

Depends who the reporter is. If it's some slapdick, you can ignore it or dismiss it humorously. If it's Peter Gammons, there's a good chance there's something to it and Pellini and Mr. Starling are lying.

 

Is the coach "going off" publicly among a lot of people or other reporters? Has the coach 'tweeted' or posted something somewhere? Or is it a private conversation, off the record or something told to the reporter second- or third-hand?

 

I would imagine it was second or third-hand info to Gammons that he just threw out there. Pelini and the Starling family have made it sound as if everything is hunky dory.

 

Or maybe another player saw Pelini get on Starling's case, repeated it, Gammons picked it up from a source, and now it's out there. This is a scenario I'm more likely to believe. I doubt Gammons would throw something out without a viable source. Now if the reporter is Joe Bag o' Doughnuts (thanks, Pete Gillen), I put less credence in it, as LTL said. But I still check it out. It's what we do.

 

The thing that's always a head-scratcher in these situations is why people would take the coach and player (or in this case the player's dad) at face value. Who has more reason to lie here, Peter Gammons or Bo Pelini?

 

Agreed.

Whenever you interview someone, please hold the thought in the back of your mind that they might be lying or not telling the whole truth.

Now, you might have to print what they say, whether you believe it or not.

But I have met too many reporters who don't even consider that somone might be spinning them.

I suppose they believe their kids when they say they don't know who at all the chocolate ice cream, too.

 

I'm shocked you would think a portion of Huskers' press corp are just Pelini's poodles.

 

One big pet peeve along these lines for me is when Mrs. Varsity says that Johnny Varsity had an "4.0 GPA" at Swinging Dick High School. I might believe that he had an A in gym, or that he's on the ridiculously low-standard honor roll. But 4.0? Prove it.

 

Haters gonna hate.

 

I blew a 4.0 once in high school and had the hangover to prove it.