Tomase's reasoning behind his article

[PatsWickedPissah]

Wow, I really got the sense there that Tomase just heard it as a rumor back in September, when all that other defensive linemen microphones and all that came out. It just didn't sound like he had one solid source that he was relying on, but rather just hearing murmurs.

Agreed. I expressed that view in post #11. A summary of myriad rumors among BB enviers = 'source'.
Any Editor worth the title should have spiked it but as I said in that post, competition with the NYT and its surrogate Boston Globe threw caution & standards to the winds.

 

[patchick]

We don't know if it is wrong yet. Walsh may say "yeah, we taped the walkthrough...i just don't have a tape". The real source also could have been telling the truth.

Sure, maybe. But weigh that wildly hypothetical "second gunman" against BB, who seldom says anything of substance to the press, unequivocally saying he has never in his career taped another team's practice or walkthrough or seen such a tape.

 

[PatsWickedPissah]

Sure, maybe. But weigh that wildly hypothetical "second gunman" against BB, who seldom says anything of substance to the press, unequivocally saying he has never in his career taped another team's practice or walkthrough or seen such a tape.

And the other 50 people that Goodell interviewed...

 

[IcyPatriot]

He has a responsibility to come out and name who fed him the BS. His source was wrong, but he needs to reveal his source.

............................................ :yeahthat:

 

[patchick]

And the other 50 people that Goodell interviewed...

...not to mention the EXTREMELY telling fact that Tomase didn't say "I had another source," he essentially said he rushed to print without proper sources because his editor wanted a scoop.

 

[Dr Pain]

He'll never reveal his source, and I dont blame him, but he has to come out an say he was wrong and apologize, otherwise his fat ass is toast in Boston.

Yea, because he has so much integrity, cough cough, that’s it. I wish him the worst personally. Not a threat of course but he is an oxygen thief IMHO and I want him to go away.

 

[pats1]

Enough with the politics. Enough with the name-calling. Patsox23, take a chill pill. Continue on with this thread. Next post with a political comment gets deleted.

 

[pats1]

It was a pretty specific rumor, referencing the team picture and the "taper" riding back to the hotel on the media bus. Not the kind of details these "reporters" swap while sipping suds on the company teat.....

But the kind of the details fabricated to make it seem like a credible story.

 

[Urgent]

That's a whiny excuse.

I was late for work, so I ran the red light and hit someone. But I was late.

In the news industry, you want to be first, but you have to be right.
No one ever lost their job for being second. You can get in a lot more trouble by being wrong.

 

[patchick]

That's a whiny excuse.

I was late for work, so I ran the red light and hit someone. But I was late.

In the news industry, you want to be first, but you have to be right.
No one ever lost their job for being second. You can get in a lot more trouble by being wrong.

...and indeed he has. This will all make a nice little case study for journalism classes.

 

[patsfaninpittsburgh]

Maybe fat azz Tomase's "source" knows where we can get our Lombardi back.

However, I do agree that this seems to be bigger than sone reject writer getting a story. Not to sound like a conspiracy nut, but it's a little hard to think that all these "rumors" were never addressed until 2 days before the Super Bowl.

 

[MoLewisrocks]

Some of the troops (the usual suspects, Felger, Mazarotti) were rallying to poor John's side today, playing what limited cards they could muster. Felger - who has the lone distinction of being employed for the moment at least by ESPN, Comcast and the Herald was insistent that if you parse John's article he never said Walsh had a tape. Somehow to Felgie saying an employee taped the walkthrough need not be tied to Walsh...even though it is pretty clear from what John himself said that Walsh was at the very least the employee he believed did the taping. Maz just kept blaming BB for starting the whole fiasco by taping the JETS and making insufficient effort to be universally loved.

Holley set the correct and balanced media tone this AM. He refused to absolve Tomase even as he explained what likely transpired. He wouldn't call for his head, but he acknowledged that he screwed up, and as a result the ball is in Tomase's court. This isn't just going to go away or be forgotten. He needs to make amends. And the more his toadies try to deny that, the worse it will get. He's done in Foxboro either way. Unless he wants to move to Peoria, he best try to mea culpa his way off the **** list of his tabloid employer's core demographic. Ordway took it a step further saying he either had to back down and admit he was duped or man up and advance his story if in fact he has a source or another suspect in mind. Either you blew it, or you stand by your story and intend to persue it. In other words, time for Tomase to **** or get off the pot.

 

[Pats726]

I agree...Tomase is done...and the Herald?? They both need to do some explaining...and quick. They wanted the scoop..known around teh country..and took that step...NOW it's time for them to come clean.

 

[FootballFanetic]

While Tomasse certainly has his share of the blame in this if his unnamed source turns out not to be credible (as it's looking like in the absence of proof to the contrary), but I do agree with him that as I understand the newspaper process his editors deserve at least some of the blame here and have so far received none. For ex., everyone knows Tomasse's name, but can anyone hear even tell you who his editor at the time is/was? Seems like this person has gotten a completely free pass on this.....

 

[flasox27]

No problem-remove them all.

 

[castlelong1]

THIS IS ALL HORSECRAP. You using Hannity or Rush as a source is F-ing ridiculous. Grow up and actually READ the news.

Wow, I called on for having a non-partisan joke about a condom being the perfect national symbol in my signature and you guys get political in the text.

Since the mods are not following their own rules, we should.

That said Rush etc. have come out and said they are entertainment. The NY Times pretends to be news. I'm pretty sure there is a different standard for entertainment and news. Candace Bergen as murphy Brown can allege to an affair with Kissingger, but Leslie Stahl can't because one is entertainment and one is news.

That said, let's drop the politics guys or I'll bring back my condom cartoon.

 

[shmessy]

OK, I just listened to that link.

Paraphrasing here, he said that he:

'heard rumors of it in September and dug around but couldn't quite nail it down'.

'when i woke up on Friday that story wasn't even on my radar screen'

'we were able to confirm it in a way that we were comfortable with'

My question is WHAT happened in those 24 hours that "confirmed" it for him that hadn't occurred in the previous 5 months?

If it was Specter raising issues, and Tomase (and more importantly the management of the Boston Herald) wanting to get in on the party - - then there was NO further confirmation of the "story" than what he and the Herald management had declined to put in their paper the previous 5 months running.

The whole issue boils down to one question:

If you and your editors felt the story was so flimsy for 5 months, what MATERIALLY changed to cause you to publish the story on the day before the Super Bowl?

All Tomase has said so far is that, 'well, Specter came out with his complaints on Thursday amd the NYT was digging around'.

- - sorry, that is not a journalistic reason why that PARTICULAR story suddenly gained confirmation within 24 hours.

At NO time in that radio interview does Tomase say that he received further confirmation in that 24 hour period - - he only references that Specter and the NYT were going public.

 

[BradyManny]

It's an interesting twist on a journalist's responsibility toward his confidential sources. Do you have an obligation to shield the identity of a source who lied to you?

I believe in this instance he has to - when you have a Senator making a whole lot of noise and the reputation of a franchise at stake, maintaining the confidentiality of a source who was either wrong or lied to you is no longer a priority.

If the Pats wanted, yeah, they could probably take some sort of legal action to ensure that the Herald's hack job is exposed as untruthful - and I don't think Walsh not having a tape will convince everyone considering how many people out there love to hate us. Tomase should just come out, say where they got the source and the erroneous information, and then even the most adamant Pats-hater will have to move on.

 

[shmessy]

We don't know if it is wrong yet. Walsh may say "yeah, we taped the walkthrough...i just don't have a tape". The real source also could have been telling the truth.

"Mr. Walsh has never claimed to have a tape of the walkthrough," Levy told The New York Times. "Mr. Walsh has never been the source of any of the media speculation about such a tape. Mr. Walsh was not the source for the Feb. 2 Boston Herald article."
_______________________

Levy is Matt Walsh's Lawyer.

Now to your second point:

If there is another "real source" then Tomase must have gotten real confirmation from him/her between waking up on Friday morning (on WROR, he claimed the story wasn't even on his radar when he woke up that day) and publication of the story the next day. Tomase claims he had heard rumors of it since September but hadn't been able to "nail it down".

So, for 5 months he can't nail it down, but he wakes up in Arizona on the Friday before the Super Bowl, reads the NYT article and Specter's news conference and "VOILA!" is able to confirm something he couldn't for 5 months within a 24 hour period. And the management of the Boston Herald (Editors, Legal Staff, Fact Checkers, etc) all sign off on it.

Nothing is impossible, but Arlen Specter would call that a "magic bullet".

 

[flasox27]

Maybe Spector was the source.