Tuesday, December 20, 2011

F-Yu!

Accountability and integrity in the media.  A code by which writers and bloggers abide by, or an oxymoron?  Baseball fans have been taken on a roller coaster ride by the media of late.  St.Louis Cardinals fans surely had their hearts ripped out when "Fat" Albert Pujols pulled a mini Lebron James and sold them out by taking his talents to LA.  This pain was intensified by an earlier NBC Sports report citing Yahoo! and an "unnamed MLB executive" and announcing that Pujols was "100 percent certain" to remain a Cardinal.  What type of irresponsible journalism is that?  I wonder if that got the hopes of Cardinals fans up.  Even though the writer of the article protected himself by referencing a different Yahoo! article citing the unnamed executive, the writer of the NBC article had no idea who the source was, and thus could have no idea of his credibility or familiarity with the situation.  Besides, how would an "MLB executive" have this sort of information, unless he was a close personal friend of Pujols himself, which he wasn't.  Yet there is the headline of the article, out there trying to grab as much attention as possible, feeding off the hopes and prayers of sports fans, with not a care in the world about whether it is reliable or not.  Hey, a lot of people read the article so probably the author got a lot of slaps on the back from his superiors and who gives a damn about accuracy?

Yesterday night it was Blue Jays fans who were given a dose of "F-Yu" at the expense of irresponsible reporting about the Yu Darvish sweepstakes.  The New York Post came out last Thursday with a report claiming the Blue Jays had likely won the sweepstakes, citing "several sources with knowledge of the situation".  Then Jays fans stay up late last night only to find out that Darvish will most likely be taking his talents to Texas.  Thanks again, media.  It wasn't just the New York Post, but every news outlet imaginable, who jumped on the bandwagon, announcing Darvish was coming to the Jays; all the while nobody knew these "knowledgeable sources" or even stopped to think about how someone would have that information as of last Thursday.  Hey, as long as they can point the finger at someone else (New York Post), it's all good.  In my mind, it is irresponsible and trashy, and one may as well be reading one of those celebrity gossip newspapers.

TTP Sports will meanwhile continue to do what we've always done - write articles with the utmost integrity and honour.  Unlike a lot of others out there.