Letters to the Editor
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Standards
King, you don't understand. That is the new standard for reporting, at least in the papers you cited.
Read Glenn Greenwald.
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How much money was wasted discussing this story?
I'm sure that company that estimates how much work time is wasted discussing the Final Four will do the same with this story.
I can see it now: "New England businesses lost Umpteen Billion Dollars while Red Sox fans discussed the sock story."
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Schilling
I grouped with Curt Schilling while playing Everquest. We were working one of the camps in Paludal Caverns. True story.
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Well
Now that's it's been officially and publicly denied by everyone involved, we can probably take for granted it's true.
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How about a disciplinary system for reporters?
I just posted this in response to Glenn Greenwald's article, but it is just as appropriate here:
Doctors have one. Lawyers have one. Plumbers, beauticians, people who brush dogs' teeth. All are licensed, and all can lose their license if they are negligent -- or malevolent -- and break the rules that allow them to do what they do.
Yet Journalists, who constantly refer to what they do as a "profession," are not professionals in any usual sense of that word. No, they are employees, usually of media companies, and it is their employers who grant them their status to practice their "profession."
And what are the economic incentives of their employers? To report news in a credible fashion? Sometimes. But more often it is to SELL a product, by catching the interest of the reader / viewer / listener.
I propose that if Journalists want to claim some shred of professionalism, that they establish a licensing board and a disciplinary process. Victims of defamation or bad reporting could file complaints with the licensing board and, if found guilty, Journalists could be disciplined with various kinds of sanctions, including license revocation.
Of course, this would not prevent anyone who wants to from writing or publishing whatever they please. But within the subset of the braying mob -- from Judith Miller to Krauthammer to Ann Coulter to Brit Hume -- there could be a cadre of actual licensed professionals, who are actually held to a set of objective standards for their work, and whose work would therefore be presumed to be more credible than that of the unlicensed.
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Schilling's blog
King, did you read Schilling's post about this mess? He does a pretty good job trashing some of the media hacks.
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not a shock
I'm honestly surprised this doesn't happen more often. Baseball announcing consists of a need to feel an aching expanse of dead air. Frankly I just assume most people just say whatever comes into their heads after a certain point.
jf
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Put Columbo On The Case
And he's going to have a question or two about the sock being thrown away.
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Standard Fox News tactic!
Except they always frame it as "Some people say...." Then you add whatever BS piece of inflammatory garbage you want to slander or libel somebody with. Thorne just messed up by using a name instead of of the old "some people."
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bloody mess
king:
the thing about the sock is - who the hell cares outside of boston? is there room in your whole column for just the names, let alone the stories, of all the people who who've played with far worse injuries? i think eric davis played an important game for the reds some years ago with a seriously lacerated kidney. buddy lazier won the indy 500 with a broken back! does ronnie lott's ex-pinky finger mean anything to people? who's to say schilling's ankle hurt worse than willis reed's in that famous finals game. it's so freaking boring really, schilling's sock! who cares? he's an egotistical, ultra-rightwing blowhard from hell anyway. you can see a lot more blood in an average football game, or just one late round of a boxing match. and red sox fans, who cares about them? have any fans in the history of sport ever changed so quickly from long-suffering sentimental favorites whom you'd like to see win if your team can't into arrogant jerks with a gigantic sense of entitlement? i just realized the other day that, for the first time in my whole life, i was rooting for the yankees as they played against the red sox. the bloody sock? spray some SHOUT on it and move on.
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Oh Please!
Grow up! I heard Thorne's statement during the game and it was light hearted, joking and in no way malicious. Furthermore, he's NOT a reporter you moron. He's a game commentator who said it was just what he was told and he didn't know how true or not it is.
So, get off your high horse and actually do some reporting, ie pick up the phone, call Thorne and ask him, or at least get the MASN tape and check it out yourself before you start bitching about standards. Honestly, you get more high off your own self righteousness as much as any sports writer I've read.
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Oh, no - Jackie Robinson too?
First Salon breaks the news that Barack Obama, isn't black, not really black anyway, not in the way that black African-Americans are. Now Kaufman blows the lid off of Jackie Robinson's not-blackness. Who's next?
Edwardo, I agree with your frustration with the modern Red Sox. And I was born in the Nation, with blue and red in my veins. Feh. C'mon Devil Rays!
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C'mon King
That was very thinly veiled attempt to flip the script on some of the unfair criticism some bloggers recieve from the MSM.
Anyway, I doubt anybody outside of Red Sox fans really cared about the bloody sox drama.
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shocking!
what's shocking is that anyone was actually watching the Orioles broadcast or listening to what Thorne said.
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I'm tired of Curt Shilling wanting to fight everyone in the bar
I mean shut up already Curt. Stop being an asshole about it. Be happy you don't work for David Stern who would no doubt fine you $20,000 for dirty socks.
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Whoo there
Quit giving this guy the ol' Al Sharpton treatment King. If I had to announce 486 hours of baseball a year, I might say some things that weren't accurate. Baseball lore and arguments are fun. How about this argument: this new controversy is probably good for the game.
I don't want Niles Krane as an announcer. Give me a guy who is crafty and entertaining. A guy who'll make you laugh and offer some insight. A guy who may have a tall cold one in the sixth. They're baseball announcers, not golf, cut them some slack.
Have you heard of Josh Hamilton? No! Really?!? Kind of a cooler story than this.