Tomase provides his explanation

[ctpatsfan77]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

Honestly, I don't know what the Hell you people are reading. It's not an apology??? He threw himself on his sword OVER and OVER and OVER. He walked you through what HE DID WRONG and took responsibility for it. ************.

Maybe it is an apology, maybe it's not.

Either way, though, it's like a criminal taking responsibility for his actions. It might mean he's worthy of some sympathy, but he still did something worthy of punishment.

Unfortunately for Tomase, in this case, I would argue that his screw-up was so fundamental that he has forfeited the privilege of getting paid to write about the Patriots.

 

[Clonamery]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

I am simply comparing the level of detail between the two in explaining their mistake.

One has explained how it happened -- but that is not good enough. The other hasn't explained how it happened -- but we are willing to speculate that there must have been a good reason.

Just pointing out the double standard being displayed.

No, you are pointing out that you are willing to take this phony, sociopath's version of his own fantasy at face value. Whatever.....it's your pathetic desire. Have at it.

 

[ctpatsfan77]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

Tomase screwed up. He made a mistake. He violated a rule of journalism. He cheated in an effort to get the story.

BB screwed up. He made a mistake. He violated a rule of the NFL.

You can't simply say each of them "violated a rule" and leave it at that. Belichick broke a technical rule to do something that could otherwise be done legally. Tomase violated one of the fundamental tenets of journalism.

 

[BradyManny]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

Honestly, I don't know what the Hell you people are reading. It's not an apology??? He threw himself on his sword OVER and OVER and OVER. He walked you through what HE DID WRONG and took responsibility for it. ************.

You clearly have some loyalty to Tomase, and you have been a fan of his for quite some time. At one point in time, I agreed with your take on Tomase, and I do think he has some talent as a writer. But "whoops, sorry" simply does not cut it. His apology is far too little too late. It really is.

There's nothing he can write or say to undo what he did particularly with the timing, and anyone who doesn't see that is blinded by some kind of connection or loyalty to this guy. It's that simple.

 

[ctpatsfan77]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

I feel the same way. He should at least be sued. He admits he concocted a story he couldn't verify based on rumors that went back a year so he could break it on the worst possible day to distract his hometown team.

I said before there's no lawsuit, but that's malice and that's intention. I'm not a lawyer but.........

Since I've seen the word "malice" thrown about various times in this thread, I just want to clarify again that, in defamation law, malice does not mean ill intent, but rather reckless disregard for the truth (i.e., knowing a story is false, or actually entertaining doubts that it could be false, and still publishing it anyways).

 

[Tunescribe]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

You can't simply say each of them "violated a rule" and leave it at that. Belichick broke a technical rule to do something that could otherwise be done legally. Tomase violated one of the fundamental tenets of journalism.

Exactly. What Tomase did was the equivalent of BB changing the scoreboard at the end of Super Bowl 42 and making everyone believe the Pats won.

 

[hambone1818]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

I'm not going to read through this whole thread (sorry), but I had two observations:

1) This little tidbit, from a reporter-friend of Tomase's: “This isn’t just any story,” another counseled. “There’s no coming back from this.”

Yeah, he's right...you're the one who printed it, so why the hell are you trying to 'regain [our] trust'? Ain't gonna happen, buddy.

2) 9pm...February 1st...the eve of the Super Bowl. The biggest game in franchise history--possibly in the history of the NFL. And you're notifying the Patriots at 9pm? An apology for this isn't warranted, because it just simply would never be accepted.

3) I may have missed it, but I didn't see an actual apology. I saw a lot of 'I want to mend fences' and 'I'll be a better journalist for this experience'. But nowhere in the article did I see 'I want to apologize to the Patriots organization, and to their fans...'. The man DID NOT APOLOGIZE. In fact, to be sure I did a search for 'apol' in the article. I came up with one result: 'The paper issued a front-page apology Wednesday.' Yeah, douchenoggle, but you didn't!

 

[Lansdowne]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

He was egregiously irresponsible and nothing less than his firing will suffice.

 

[nelly57]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

It isn't that I disagree with his reasoning. I just haven't heard his reasoning at least not from him. I have heard many people on this board speculate to what his reasoning might have been. But I have not heard BB come forward and explain the situation himself. It is over due.

It's not BB's job to explain any thing to the public, perhaps to his players, to his assistant and colleagues.... but not to the public. BB's job is to coach and win games.

Tomase's job was to report the truth and not report rumors. If I wanted fabricated stories I would read fiction.

 

[oldskool138]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

If I wanted fabricated stories I would read fiction.

Or the Globe.

 

[Patriot_in_NY]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

OMFG, That article makes me want to vomit.

What a novice. He needs to be fired. His editors that allowed this story to run without proper vetting need to be fired, and the Herald need to totally overhaul the way it does business. They all have NO CREDIBILITY. None of us should ever READ that rag again, unless changes are made.

This tiny tidbit from the article is so revealing it makes me ill.

Caught up in the moment, I was excited to break a big story, but I had been so wrapped up in the process that I hadn’t stepped back to consider the ramifications.

“You’re really putting your neck out there,” one reporter friend said.

“This isn’t just any story,” another counseled. “There’s no coming back from this.”

For the first time, a pit settled in my stomach. That pit would become my constant companion for the next three months. I had no doubt the story was accurate when it ran, but now the enormity of what I had done was setting in. Journalism isn’t a popularity contest, but good Lord, this story was not going to be well received.

It's sad, but this is what we can expect from the MSM these days. We see it everyday.

 

[MoLewisrocks]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

I'm not going to read through this whole thread (sorry), but I had two observations:

1) This little tidbit, from a reporter-friend of Tomase's: “This isn’t just any story,” another counseled. “There’s no coming back from this.”

Yeah, he's right...you're the one who printed it, so why the hell are you trying to 'regain [our] trust'? Ain't gonna happen, buddy.

2) 9pm...February 1st...the eve of the Super Bowl. The biggest game in franchise history--possibly in the history of the NFL. And you're notifying the Patriots at 9pm? An apology for this isn't warranted, because it just simply would never be accepted.

3) I may have missed it, but I didn't see an actual apology. I saw a lot of 'I want to mend fences' and 'I'll be a better journalist for this experience'. But nowhere in the article did I see 'I want to apologize to the Patriots organization, and to their fans...'. The man DID NOT APOLOGIZE. In fact, to be sure I did a search for 'apol' in the article. I came up with one result: 'The paper issued a front-page apology Wednesday.' Yeah, douchenoggle, but you didn't!

Yup, same observation Dale Arnold just made. 1500 or so words, and not one of them was sorry - except about himself.

Tomase has now blogged a personal apology to the Patriots, BB, the players, the Krafts and the fan base on his blog. The question now is why, after all that has transpired since February 2nd, did it have to be pointed out to him by over a thousand comments on May 16th that he failed to apologize...

He says he will apologize to many in person. Holley says he can't imagine why Tomase believes he will have the opportunity to...

 

[shmessy]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

OMFG, That article makes me want to vomit.

What a novice. He needs to be fired. His editors that allowed this story to run without proper vetting need to be fired, and the Herald need to totally overhaul the way it does business. They all have NO CREDIBILITY. None of us should ever READ that rag again, unless changes are made.

This tiny tidbit from the article is so revealing it makes me ill.



It's sad, but this is what we can expect from the MSM these days. We see it everyday.

You hit an important point.

Let's ignore for the moment the intent, greed, etc.

What about the INCOMPETENCE????

As I mentioned before, why would any THINKING adult waste one moment trying to learn information from people who need a diagram in order to tie their own shoes?

The Herald is in the information business. Would any of us want our surgeries performed by surgeons who ranked in the bottom 90th percentile on their MCATS?

 

[BradyManny]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

He says he will apologize to many in person. Holley says he can't imagine why Tomase believes he will have the opportunity to...

Tomase should really just hide in a cave somewhere. Honestly, I said it at the time, the worst thing he did was undermine what the players achieved by defeating the Rams.

 

[Tunescribe]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

OMFG, That article makes me want to vomit.

What a novice. He needs to be fired. His editors that allowed this story to run without proper vetting need to be fired, and the Herald need to totally overhaul the way it does business. They all have NO CREDIBILITY. None of us should ever READ that rag again, unless changes are made.

This tiny tidbit from the article is so revealing it makes me ill.



It's sad, but this is what we can expect from the MSM these days. We see it everyday.

The very, very scary thing about the segment you highlighted is that it indicates a disconnect from reality on a disturbingly personal level. On a professional level, it's unfathomable for a reporter of Tomase's experience and level of employ to even have approached that thought process.

 

[Return of the Nizz]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

This is pathetic and makes Mazz's article even more ridiculous. People on this board would expect more evidence from a poster here with a rumor than Tomase had to write the most important story of his life.

If I came here and said, two guys I know HEARD that the walk-through was taped, I'd be laughed off the board and rightly so. If Tomase is really that gullible and that ready to believe every rumor he hears then he should be in a different profession. **** him.

 

[Patriotic Fervor]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

I think we agree more than we disagree about this.

BTW, ironically, I live in the DC area - - so my familiarity with The Post/Bradlee/Woodward/Bernstein is actually greater than my familiarity with Tomase! Honestly, Woodward and Bernstein were practically stringers in 1972. Nobody could believe why Bradlee let them stay on the story instead of putting a grown up on it. Not only that, but the Washington Post wasn't what it became later, either. The Washington Star, only a few years earlier, had been the #1 paper.

Those guys BECAME legends, but at the time, they were probably regarded as less than Tomase and his editors.

I remember the Star. That was a good paper, and I greatly preferred it over the Post.

In passing, I should note that it's been my personal opinion for a long, long time that Watergate was one of the worst things to ever happen to this country. Not the outcome - Nixon was a jerk, and he pretty much got what he deserved - but the process it spawned.

Now, everyone who goes into Journalism has Woodward and Bernstein in the back of their minds. They were, as you say, little more than stringers, who received the benefice of a smile from Fate. Now, everything has to be blown up to Olympian proportions, whether it should be or not.

As Freud once said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. The media lost sight of that truism in 1972.

And now it's spilled over into just about every other pore and opening in the media, and I think that's added to the general population's disgust and distrust of all things media.

As for that "reporter" John Tomase, I don't think, even now, he's fully grasped the implications of what he's done. He seems to think that with publication of this "explanation", life will just go on, tra-la-la, but in one fell swoop he's ended his career. There is simply no coming back from this, it's that big.

The sad thing is, he doesn't give any indication he realizes that.

Quite really, we're watching a dead man (career-wise) walking.

 

[Ungeheuer]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

I'm a professional print journalist and I was shocked by Tomase's explanation. I'm even more shocked that his editors haven't fired him yet. Let me explain why:

1) Anybody who runs this kind of story is going to want to use more than one source. Even if your second source is just telling you the time of day, you print the name of that second source in conjunction with your main unnamed source. It adds credibility to your entire exercise, proves that you talked to more than one person. In this case, with a story of this magnitude, I wouldn't go near it unless I had at least three quoted sources in there. The consequences are too great if you fail. But while Tomase claims he talked to many people, he only cited the one (unnamed) source. That tells me that that source was really his one and only source, because if anyone else talked to him about this, he would have quoted that person. What I'm trying to say is that he's still lying -- when he says "people I trusted" what he really means is "person I trusted." For a reporter to go to print with this kind of story on the basis of one unnamed source is astonishing incompetence. And frankly, the Herald's editors are equally to blame. In my organization I wouldn't get near publication with this kind of thing. This just blows me away.

2) Moreover, I'm more and more getting the idea that Tomase's source wasn't a current member of the team/organization. We're talking probably about some kind of low-level ex-employee -- or maybe even another sportswriter. Ex-employees often have reasons they're no longer current employees. You have to double- and triple-check their assertions. Again, to hang himself out to dry like that on the basis of a source of that variety is unbelievable.

3) Any print reporter working in any halfway professional organization has to go through a rigorous fact-checking process any time he publishes something like this. Since Jayson Blair nobody I know in this business has been able to get away with telling his fact-checkers that they can't have access to his source. The editors would say to the fact-checkers, "Look, we're going to print saying the Patriots stole a Super Bowl. I don't care of your source is the Pope. I want to know his name and I want to hear a tape of everything he said to you." Notes wouldn't be good enough. You would have to have ironclad confirmation on this kind of piece; the fact-checkers or the editor at the very least would need to hear an audiotape of the interview. In this case that either a) didn't happen or b) it did happen, and the editor judged it good enough to run. In either case it shows that the Herald's fact-checking department is totally dysfunctional. Again, given that we've all lived through Jayson Blair, it's pretty amazing that they could make a mistake like that.


Just all around, this is the worst journalism you can imagine. The funny thing is that the Herald's news sections are always pretty decent when it comes to sourcing. It's so odd that this would take place in the sports section.

 

[theONLYJerseypatsfan]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

You hit an important point.

Let's ignore for the moment the intent, greed, etc.

What about the INCOMPETENCE????

As I mentioned before, why would any THINKING adult waste one moment trying to learn information from people who need a diagram in order to tie their own shoes?

The Herald is in the information business. Would any of us want our surgeries performed by surgeons who ranked in the bottom 90th percentile on their MCATS?

I think that the fact that this guy hasnt even had to change his parking spot let alone careers is a sad commentary about this country....

As I strive to work as hard as I can and be a model worker in corporate america (kind of a recent college grad) I realize that alot of times incompetence and flat out unprofessionalism has no consequences anymore..these people still get their paycheck..many get raises and promotions. Meanwhile hard working people who care about how the company/group does just have to continue to chug along and hope that ONE DAY someone will notice...

it is sad...

OT....to any pharma people on this board....hows the pharma/biotech industry doing in Boston/Mass?? Wife and I are looking to move before the kids start coming

 

[Tunescribe]

Re: *****Alert: The Tomase Explanation Is Now Up

I'm a professional print journalist and I was shocked by Tomase's explanation. I'm even more shocked that his editors haven't fired him yet. Let me explain why:

1) Anybody who runs this kind of story is going to want to use more than one source. Even if your second source is just telling you the time of day, you print the name of that second source in conjunction with your main unnamed source. It adds credibility to your entire exercise, proves that you talked to more than one person. In this case, with a story of this magnitude, I wouldn't go near it unless I had at least three quoted sources in there. The consequences are too great if you fail. But while Tomase claims he talked to many people, he only cited the one (unnamed) source. That tells me that that source was really his one and only source, because if anyone else talked to him about this, he would have quoted that person. What I'm trying to say is that he's still lying -- when he says "people I trusted" what he really means is "person I trusted." For a reporter to go to print with this kind of story on the basis of one unnamed source is astonishing incompetence. And frankly, the Herald's editors are equally to blame. In my organization I wouldn't get near publication with this kind of thing. This just blows me away.

2) Moreover, I'm more and more getting the idea that Tomase's source wasn't a current member of the team/organization. We're talking probably about some kind of low-level ex-employee -- or maybe even another sportswriter. Ex-employees often have reasons they're no longer current employees. You have to double- and triple-check their assertions. Again, to hang himself out to dry like that on the basis of a source of that variety is unbelievable.

3) Any print reporter working in any halfway professional organization has to go through a rigorous fact-checking process any time he publishes something like this. Since Jayson Blair nobody I know in this business has been able to get away with telling his fact-checkers that they can't have access to his source. The editors would say to the fact-checkers, "Look, we're going to print saying the Patriots stole a Super Bowl. I don't care of your source is the Pope. I want to know his name and I want to hear a tape of everything he said to you." Notes wouldn't be good enough. You would have to have ironclad confirmation on this kind of piece; the fact-checkers or the editor at the very least would need to hear an audiotape of the interview. In this case that either a) didn't happen or b) it did happen, and the editor judged it good enough to run. In either case it shows that the Herald's fact-checking department is totally dysfunctional. Again, given that we've all lived through Jayson Blair, it's pretty amazing that they could make a mistake like that.


Just all around, this is the worst journalism you can imagine. The funny thing is that the Herald's news sections are always pretty decent when it comes to sourcing. It's so odd that this would take place in the sports section.

I'm the same as you. I was a newspaper reporter for 17 years, and now am publisher/editor of my own music magazine. What I've seen with the Tomase/Herald fiasco appears unprecedented. It flies in the face of all logic and reason and totally lays bare how absolutely bereft the Herald is of journalistic integrity. It's crap like this that gives folks like you and me a bad name by sheer association with the profession.