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The Raul Ibanez thing...

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by BB Bobcat, Jun 10, 2009.

  1. beardpuller

    beardpuller Active Member

    Bingo!
    Nobody knew what this obscure blogger in the midwest had said until Gonzalez made a huge deal out of it, expressing his "outrage." Incredibly disingenuous. The issue here isn't the standards of blogs, it's a newspaper guy using a blog report as a fig leaf to cover his own grab for attention. I don't cover the Phillies, but I hope somebody set Ibanez straight on who is really to blame for this "controversy."
    Really, really putrid.
     
  2. Andy _ Kent

    Andy _ Kent Member

    Van, nicely put. I was just about to post the same idea. I'm glad BB introduced the post the way he did, with links to all three articles, because I went ahead and read the entire blog and actually thought it was pretty well-written for a "fan," and definitely better researched than some legitimate articles I have seen make it into the paper or on the Web. Was it a thorough investigative piece? No, but he never claimed that it was or tried to pass it off as an E:60 piece and admitted he would liked to have kept on digging but he was, after all, talking about his fantasy team and league.

    Heck, he made it quite clear that it was another fantasy guy who leveled the steroid accusation and he set out to refute that accusation by pulling all the numbers and analysis that he did. Then he made what I think is a valid point that unfortunately because of examples like Palmeiro, A-Rod and most recently Manny, it is now going to be human nature to question anybody putting up career numbers, and that's the bed MLB and the union made so they now have to sleep in it.

    Gonzalez I think was alerted to the blog somehow, saw the headline and then immediately formulated his column before reading the blog. Then it was too late to reverse course so he cherry-picked a few passages that fit his argument, lit the firecracker, put it in Ibanez's mail box and then sat back and let the show begin,
     
  3. Shaggy

    Shaggy Guest

    MLB players lost the right to have the benefit of the doubt.

    Ibanez should be mad at his fellow players if he's getting any heat for suspicious numbers.
     
  4. imjustagirl

    imjustagirl Active Member

    I'm with Andy. Seemed like Gonzalez cherry-picked the only part where the blogger said anything that could be twisted into something salacious, and went with it.

    I thought the newspaper column was FAR more incendiary and less thought-out than the blog post was. Gonzalez could probably learn something about research from the blogger.
     
  5. Pilot

    Pilot Well-Known Member

    Exactly. Far more often than not recently the outliers have proven to be just as dirty as people suggest they are. It's not cynical any more. It's common sense.

    Everyone comes out of this looking a little dumb, but the newspaper should have known better. Is a blog that much different than a couple guys sitting around a sports bar bullshitting about whether or not Ibanez is dirty, speculating and pointing to a collection of facts? Would a newspaper ever write about that?
     
  6. BB Bobcat

    BB Bobcat Active Member

    While I agree with you 100 percent, the purpose of this thread is really to analyze the way the newspaper handled it (it is in the journalism topic, not sports and news).

    And I'm still interested to hear how you handle if you are another news outlet, once the Inquirer prints and gets the reaction from Ibanez.
     
  7. SF_Express

    SF_Express Active Member

    As somebody who was involved with such a story years before bloggers -- probably 1978, in fact -- I continue to remain uncomfortable with stories or blog posts or whatever where somebody says, "I'm not saying X is using drugs, but people are talking about it, and isn't it interesting he's having a career year at 37?"

    On its face, there's not a single thing wrong with that sentence. But it obviously equals: He's probably doing drugs.

    I don't even know what the solution is anymore; I initially thought posters on here blaming the Inquirer guy were off base, but the more that I thought about it getting down the this point, the more sense it made. If you don't like the implications of such writing, spreading the audience for it is the worst thing you can do.

    It still, to me, remains a fog-gray area. Because, as somebody else noted above, if a guy is 37 and doing things he has never done before, in baseball, in 2009, of COURSE people are going to speculate abou PEDs. And then, is writing about the speculation wrong on its face?

    The answer isn't that simple, which of course is a completely unhelpful conclusion.
     
  8. Gonzalez would, if it would get him a TV or radio appearance or two
     
  9. Smasher_Sloan

    Smasher_Sloan Active Member


    I don't care if it's called "Aunt Tillie's Cookie Recipes." If someone writes that the winner of the Pillsbury Bake-Off is a cheating whore who won because she blew all the judges, you'd better be able to back it up with proof.

    When you blog and distribute the material on the Internet, you publish and you're held to those standards. Doesn't matter if it's only your hobby.
     
  10. Diabeetus

    Diabeetus Active Member

    As always, JoPo actually does his homework: http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2009/06/10/whats-eating-raul/

    The money portion:

     
  11. Tarheel316

    Tarheel316 Well-Known Member

    Since we're on the subject of PEDs, didn't anyone find it interesting that when the Mitchell Report came out, none of the Red Sox were named? Of course Mitchell being on the Red Sox board of directors had nothing to do with it. Right?
     
  12. Pilot

    Pilot Well-Known Member

    [​IMG]
    What the hell just happened?
     
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