How do we feel about the Chron guys now?

You think they should just hide in shame? Pull a Mark McGwire and refuse to talk about the past? C'mon, these are journalists. They have a responsibility to answer these questions. Of course, the people in the media who have invested so much in these guys, not to mention the T-shirts, won't be asking the questions. But I don't think it will die down, at least in journalism circles, until the questions are answered.

Bronstein and Fainaru-Wada seem to be the guys who need to explain themselves most. Have either of them surfaced since it was revealed that the Chronicle had been duped?

 

I'd go light on "duped." "Used," maybe. "Cooperated," definitely. But "duped" means they got fed bad information, and nobody knows that yet.

 

Oh Cranberry so naive, don't you know that journalists never answer questions?
Wait, don't answer that.
Journalists, as a breed, will not accept responsibility for errors. Everything they do is always right and how dare you question the process since getting the story is the most important thing. As a group, probably about as thin-skinned as you will see.
Bronstein would sooner answer questions about his sex life with Sharon Stone than say a word about the BALCO story.

As an example: The local holier than thou alt-weekly has a media critic. She has a blog and she ripped one of the columnists in her paper. The alt-weekly's publisher ordered the blog taken down. It is fine and dandy to rip the TV or the metro or any of the regionals, but you don't say anything bad about yourself.

 

I think I'm OK with it:

dupe1 /dup, dyup/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[doop, dyoop] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, duped, dup·ing.
–noun
1. a person who is easily deceived or fooled; gull.
2. a person who unquestioningly or unwittingly serves a cause or another person: a dupe of the opponents.
–verb (used with object)
3. to make a dupe of; deceive; delude; trick.


JayFarrar...I'm not really a naive person; I just play one on SportsJournalists.com.

 

I would just as soon he do that, too.

 

Dooley, all you need to know is this, "coke-fueled orgies."

 

What's really hard to accept is that Chris Russo comes out of this looking like a better reporter than the Chron guys.

If you live long enough, you see everything...

 

They're not acting like they're ashamed of anything.

Don't worry cran, I'm sure CNN will be breaking away from Anna Nicole coverage any minute now to hold Phil Bronstein's feet to the fire.

 

I have problems with the methodology, too, but how in god's name does this follow?

 

When the book came out Russo badgered Fainaru-Wada with, "Well, you just did it for the money, right? RIGHT?"

From what I'm reading, turned out he was right.

 

The public will forget about this, if they ever knew in the first place. The 'what's hot today' media will move on, they never really understood it to begin with.

But the reporters' colleagues will remember, for a long long time. A lot of people went out on the limb (and the bus and the courthouse steps), not just on their behalf, but to support our collective right to protect sources without being treated as criminals. Some (many? most?) of those folks want to know that they didn't support a questionable cause.

The reporters have no obligation whatsoever to discuss this, ever. But it will definitely affect the way many of their brethren look at them.

 

He's still an idiot.
They didn't do the original stories for the money.
They got paid for the book, I'm sure.
Is he saying the information, however it was obtained, was wrong?
He's a Giants fanboy.