Patriots Rumor ESPN hitpiece on Patriots (Rift with Brady/Belichick/Kraft) - Merged

[PatsFanSince74]

its tough but investigative journalism could not exist without anonymous sources..

That said this story is laughable.

Unfortunately, credible "investigative journalism" no longer exists, with a few, rare exceptions. A true investigative journalist earns his/her credibility over time. Very few have that credibility today. Wickersham certainly doesn't.

On a scale of 1--10, with 1 being "Completely undeserving of belief" and 10 being "Woodward and Bernstein on Watergate," I'd put an anonymous post quoting "a buddy in the business" at 1.

 

[RobertWeathers]

Unfortunately, credible "investigative journalism" no longer exists, with a few, rare exceptions. A true investigative journalist earns his/her credibility over time. Very few have that credibility today. Wickersham certainly doesn't.

On a scale of 1--10, with 1 being "Completely undeserving of belief" and 10 being "Woodward and Bernstein on Watergate," I'd put an anonymous post quoting "a buddy in the business" at 1.

I'd put Hank Phillipe Ryan ahead of Seth Wickersham. At least she'll tell me when the dishwasher repair guy is overcharging me.

 

[IllegalContact]

Unfortunately, credible "investigative journalism" no longer exists, with a few, rare exceptions. A true investigative journalist earns his/her credibility over time. Very few have that credibility today. Wickersham certainly doesn't.

On a scale of 1--10, with 1 being "Completely undeserving of belief" and 10 being "Woodward and Bernstein on Watergate," I'd put an anonymous post quoting "a buddy in the business" at 1.

bingo......it's a ton of work figuring out which stories have any truth to them or if they're even worth pursuing

 

[mosslost]

Unfortunately, credible "investigative journalism" no longer exists, with a few, rare exceptions. A true investigative journalist earns his/her credibility over time. Very few have that credibility today. Wickersham certainly doesn't.

On a scale of 1--10, with 1 being "Completely undeserving of belief" and 10 being "Woodward and Bernstein on Watergate," I'd put an anonymous post quoting "a buddy in the business" at 1.

Woodward and Bernstein used a lot of anonymous sources.

 

[bormio]

This guy is doing more defending of his story than Johnmy Cochran for OJ.

As much as possible????? What kind of response is that. “Well we tried really, really hard to verify and if we got it wrong, we are really, really sorry.”

 

[Former Fan]

Let's just ignore the fact that whatever appears under Reiss' byline may in fact not be what he wrote at all. And let's also ignore the fact that he doesn't seem to give a **** when his employer does that.

 

[Clonamery]

bingo......it's a ton of work figuring out which stories have any truth to them or if they're even worth pursuing

Given the 24 hour news cycles of today, yes

 

[Clonamery]

I try not to judge people by their looks, but Wickersham looks like Gollum with a wig made of pubes.

He looks like a flight attendant for United who just had a passenger thrown off a flight for asking for more pretzels.

 

[jri37]

Kinda looks like Loki

A young Anthony Weiner

 

[BradyFTW!]

Woodward and Bernstein used a lot of anonymous sources.

Woodward and Bernstein were credible. That's the whole deal with anonymous sources: since the source isn't willing to stake their own credibility, you have to go on the credibility of the person doing the reporting instead. If a credible reporter/institution cites anonymous sources, I'm inclined to give a **** what they have to say. And they build that credibility by consistently getting the story right, and just as importantly by not getting stories wrong. If you want people to trust your claim that you have anonymous sources, you'd better have an established track record of vetting the hell out of them and being right.

If a zero-credibility hack cites anonymous sources, I'm inclined to bet they either made the whole thing up or are misrepresenting whatever sources they do have, who they probably didn't vet much or at all anyway. We just had a significant news story about a partisan source trying to deliberately feed false information to the Washington Post under the guise of being an anonymous source. WaPo vetted the source, caught them, and called them out on it. This is par for the course now. I would never argue that you should uniformly disbelieve anything sourced by anonymous sources. I will observe that you should trust claims attributed to anonymous sources exactly as much as you trust the entity reporting those claims. So if they're coming from ESPN, a place with a long-established track record of vetting nothing and running with agendas, **** em.

 

[Ross12]

As much as possible????? What kind of response is that. “Well we tried really, really hard to verify and if we got it wrong, we are really, really sorry.”

"We verify things as much as possible."

Live look into the verification process...

Wickersham: "This is some pretty incredible information you're giving me. You said you're a Patriots staffer?"
Source: "Yeah I am."
Wickersham: "Can you prove that this information is true?"
Source: "No I can't prove it."
Wickersham: "Can you prove that you actually work for the Patriots?"
Source: "No."
Wickersham: "Well, we verified it as much as possible. Print it!"

 

[RobertWeathers]

A young Anthony Weiner

Wow.....He really does.

 

[Clonamery]

Wow.....He really does.

And it disgusts me.

 

[BradyFTW!]

"We verify things as much as possible."

Live look into the verification process...

Wickersham: "This is some pretty incredible information you're giving me. You said you're a Patriots staffer?"
Source: "Yeah I am."
Wickersham: "Can you prove that this information is true?"
Source: "No I can't prove it."
Wickersham: "Can you prove that you actually work for the Patriots?"
Source: "No."
Wickersham: "Well, we verified it as much as possible. Print it!"

Then I emailed that guy back and asked if he was really a Nigerian prince. He said he definitely is, so **** it, good enough for me!

 

[AtomicDawg]

A young Anthony Weiner

Well he and Weiner have something in common. He was probably pulling his Mr. Happy thinking of all the hits his piece of trash article would get.

 

[signbabybrady]

He's likely working on something like that now. He's already run a statement from Brady/Belichick/Kraft, and it can be reasonably assumed that he's working on his own take/response to this story.

Which may take a little bit of time, for a number of reasons including:


And this also brings us back to square one: whatever Reiss eventually runs with, it will be meticulously sourced and vetted. If people are willing to go on the record, he'll go with them over anonymous sources that may or may not have their own agendas. Which means he's not going to get the hot takes that clowns like Wickersham are getting, and may even seem like moderated takes compared to the crap we're used to. Which isn't him being a bad journalist, it's him being a responsible journalists.

I'll apologize to Mike when/if he does.

 

[FCB02062]

Jesus, Fred Touch-hole was like a wild man loving everything in this piece this morning and yelling at anyone who questioned it. Wickersham will be on with Dale and Holley w/Keefe at 3:00 today.

Toucher and Rich would rather be talking about 80s/90s punk bands and the latest movies than sports...

 

[ashley]

Everyone can have their opinion of Reiss, but personally I think he is very good and knowledgeable. I used to always email him when he had his weekly mailbag and even met him once in person. I thought he always answered my questions honestly and straightforward and still thinks he has a really good pulse on the team.

 

[upstater1]

Total honeymoon period thus far. Any potential warts have been entirely ignored because he's played well, they've won, and he's won over the locker room.

In the process, he's earned himself 10's of millions of dollars. Well done by JG and the 49ers.

2018 will be the real test. Are they a 11-5 team or a 7-9 team? I.e., was all the end of 2017 season hype valid? Remains entirely to be seen.

I'd also add that I heard a reporter say Jimmy G has been brilliant last 5 games as opposed to Brady who's been struggling.

Jimmy G threw 5 INTs in those games.

It's interesting to think how great Brady must be that he can be compared to a QB who performs similarly, and for Brady, that's struggling, but for the other guy, he clearly outplayed Brady.

I heard this uttered by a talking head on ESPN.

If you remove the Dolphins game (where they missed Gronk and others), there's not a lot of difference.

 

[mosslost]

Woodward and Bernstein were credible. That's the whole deal with anonymous sources: since the source isn't willing to stake their own credibility, you have to go on the credibility of the person doing the reporting instead. If a credible reporter/institution cites anonymous sources, I'm inclined to give a **** what they have to say. And they build that credibility by consistently getting the story right, and just as importantly by not getting stories wrong. If you want people to trust your claim that you have anonymous sources, you'd better have an established track record of vetting the hell out of them and being right.

If a zero-credibility hack cites anonymous sources, I'm inclined to bet they either made the whole thing up or are misrepresenting whatever sources they do have, who they probably didn't vet much or at all anyway. We just had a significant news story about a partisan source trying to deliberately feed false information to the Washington Post under the guise of being an anonymous source. WaPo vetted the source, caught them, and called them out on it. This is par for the course now. I would never argue that you should uniformly disbelieve anything sourced by anonymous sources. I will observe that you should trust claims attributed to anonymous sources exactly as much as you trust the entity reporting those claims. So if they're coming from ESPN, a place with a long-established track record of vetting nothing and running with agendas, **** em.

I don't disagree with you. I am just saying that just "the sources are anonymous" is a bad argument to make against the veracity of a story. Without anonymous sources we would have next to no investigative journalism. I agree that this story is crap, but lots of posters keep posting at the anonymous sources as an issue.

It is entirely feasible that a Patriot employee (or any team) would supply information anonymously to a journalist. (A very reasonable claim in fact.) I highly doubt it, but if a Patriot employee were to give information, he would be nuts to do it on the record.