Albert Breer wants proof about the n-word at Fenway

Whitey had his start about thirty years before busing became an issue. He had already been in Federal prison for bank robbery.

 

Really. Com'on now. Boston's racial history is bad enough for the facts to stand for themselves.

 

As I posted on another thread, crowd tonight gave Jones a big ovation on his first at-bat.

 

Sabathia: Black players expect Boston racism

"We know. There's 62 of us. We all know. When you go to Boston, expect it," Sabathia said.

 

I just assumed the city only became racist in January.

 

Self-satisfied white guilt. And to show the players' own adherence to immature, inane rules, Sales whizzed a heater at the next hitter Machado for having the gall to admire a hit last game. Such a nice set of moments...

 

Breer is going all in but he's missing the point he's trying to make.
Let's have an actual journalism discussion about this.
Any story that says Jones was called a racial slur is wrong. Jones alleges he was called one. Jones said he was called one. Not "Jones was called one."
I heard the Globe's Nick Cafardo say Jones is a believable person and that's why he wrote his story. But being believable doesn't mean shit in this business. Bob Nightengale said the same thing on WEEI. They took Jones at his word, which is what you do with a good source. But you do not, in any circumstance, say something happened when all you have is a single source.
Of course, those clicks are worth more than practicing the craft, so let's just keep posting salacious click-bait headlines and aggregating stories stating this as something that was said, checked and corroborated.

This is what I hope is the case. I'd hope if someone from the bleachers fired off an N-bomb somebody would do something or say something. Say what you want about millenials (and I guess I'm on the older side of them, technically), is they don't put up with anything like that. It gets reported or handled because it's the right thing to do. I really hope someone said something that Jones misheard, because as bad as it is saying that it's almost worse to be indifferent about it.

 

Why is there a tag on this thread to "when compare/contrast goes horribly wrong"? Did Baron stop in?

 

Jones was not the only source. The Boston mayor, Massachusetts governor, MLB commissioner and the team itself acknowledged it happened and apologized for it.

 

Guessing they all are taking Jones' word for it -- which is what you'd expect -- but I'm not sure that points to more than one source.

 

You're probably right. What are the chances the Red Sox were even there?

 

The Mayor, Governor, MLB commish and team all acknowledged the accusation. The Sox specifically apologized for the peanut-throwing (which happened while he was in the dugout) but said they were investigating the other incident. That's not a confirmation.

Again, I'm not saying Jones was lying. I'm hoping, as mentioned, that he thought he heard someone say something and nobody actually did because it's horrible to think someone would do that.

But if a source tells you they heard something do you just run with it as fact or try to confirm with another source? I figured by now someone who's buddy was at the game would have called one of the radio stations to confirm, or someone would have dug up a tweet from last night from some random fan saying "At Fenway, just heard some hillbilly yell an N bomb at Adam Jones" or maybe a Snapchat video of the dude being escorted out that says "dude tossed for being an a-hole."

Remember that old guy who dressed as Santa who said he held a kid in his arms as the kid died and everyone took him at his word, then it started looking like the story wasn't true because there was no proof he was where he said he was or that the kid ever existed? From a journalism perspective, how is this different?