The SI article about Tressel

• Writerbuckeye

  

  Well, so far as I know, the parents in the article didn't have a criminal record. So yes, I'd say they're more credible.
  
  That article had NO real proof in it. Lots of allegations...no proof. It was a very shoddy piece of journalism, all in all. When I was being trained as a journalist (in school and on the job) I was taught you had to corroborate allegations like this. Just having someone SAY it was so, didn't suffice.
  
  Sadly, all that has changed today and you can apparently win Pulitzer Prizes by doing very little investigative work.
• jordo212000

  

  Well, so far as I know, the parents in the article didn't have a criminal record. So yes, I'd say they're more credible.

  Yup. I bet the parents involved are completely free of bias. They definitely are not going to defend their son who has a lot to lose by the allegations being proved true. And a 20 year old kid is always going to tell his parents the truth, even when drugs and a shady hangout are involved
• Writerbuckeye

  

  jordo212000;806222 wrote:Yup. I bet the parents involved are completely free of bias. They definitely are not going to defend their son who has a lot to lose by the allegations being proved true. And a 20 year old kid is always going to tell his parents the truth, even when drugs and a shady hangout are involved

  
  All your sarcasm aside, those parents, in fact, DO have more public credibility with reasonable people who have no agenda or bias already.
• karen lotz

  

  Writerbuckeye;806299 wrote:All your sarcasm aside, those parents, in fact, DO have more public credibility with reasonable people who have no agenda or bias already.

  
  
  Are you saying you or other Buckeye fans have no agenda or bias already?
• jordo212000

  

  Yup. I bet the parents involved are completely free of bias. They definitely are not going to defend their son who has a lot to lose by the allegations being proved true. And a 20 year old kid is always going to tell his parents the truth, even when drugs and a shady hangout are involved

  
  All your sarcasm aside, those parents, in fact, DO have more public credibility with reasonable people who have no agenda or bias already.

  How are you going to find somebody with a reasonable amount of credibility at a shady tattoo parlor that doubles as a druglord's hangout? I guess the lesson here is to find the shadiest place possible to act like a moron. When you get accused of something you can simply scoff at the person's credibility who comes forward. Even when that person hung out in the same place you had formerly hung out at
• enigmaax

  Writerbuckeye;806299 wrote:All your sarcasm aside, those parents, in fact, DO have more public credibility with reasonable people who have no agenda or bias already.

  
  Not really. Were the kids' parents hanging out at the tattoo parlor with them? Doubt it. They weren't there. They have every reason to defend their children. They have every reason to hate the shady characters with whom their sons chose to associate. As far as direct knowledge of what really happened, they don't know shit.
  
  Now the "criminals" who were acutally there? I'm not sure what you really think their motivation would be. One guy is in prison. He isn't getting out early for talking to SI. They aren't paying him. They aren't saying his name so there's no publicity. If the names weren't right, how'd he pick them? Did the SI writer randomly pull names off a roster and get him to agree?
  
  It was a huge risk on the writer's part to name names on the word of questionable characters. You could also question why a highly successful writer would take such a risk (Pulitzer Prize already, doesn't really need the exposure).
  
  I really thought the article fell kind of flat - I don't get the connection he was trying to make to Tressel. I don't know that the article really damages OSU any more. But it is naive to keep acting as though nothing anyone is saying can be believed because of the sources. The reason guys are having to defend themselves against such shady characters is because they chose to run with shady characters. You can't blame the crowd when you are the crowd.
• Writerbuckeye

  

  The article wasn't meant to actually create problems for Tressel directly.
  
  It was a hit piece.
  
  It's sole purpose was to set a sleazy atmosphere and make it appear as if that is the usual atmosphere that surrounds Ohio State football.
  
  As someone who has actually worked in the profession, I'd argue that it takes not risk at all on the part of the writer. The people involved are public figures. Nobody is likely to sue; and they sure as hell aren't likely to win anything in court.
  
  The hard part would have been if the writer had done his job correctly and actually corroborated what he found with more than the criminals and anonymous sources he used.
  
  By the way...some people like to see their names in print and get attention. That's why criminals and others say stuff like this. It's not like they have a history of doing the right thing.
• jordo212000

  

  All your sarcasm aside, those parents, in fact, DO have more public credibility with reasonable people who have no agenda or bias already.

  
  
  Not really. Were the kids' parents hanging out at the tattoo parlor with them? Doubt it. They weren't there. They have every reason to defend their children. They have every reason to hate the shady characters with whom their sons chose to associate. As far as direct knowledge of what really happened, they don't know shit.
  
  
  
  Now the "criminals" who were acutally there? I'm not sure what you really think their motivation would be. One guy is in prison. He isn't getting out early for talking to SI. They aren't paying him. They aren't saying his name so there's no publicity. If the names weren't right, how'd he pick them? Did the SI writer randomly pull names off a roster and get him to agree?
  
  
  
  It was a huge risk on the writer's part to name names on the word of questionable characters. You could also question why a highly successful writer would take such a risk (Pulitzer Prize already, doesn't really need the exposure).
  
  
  
  I really thought the article fell kind of flat - I don't get the connection he was trying to make to Tressel. I don't know that the article really damages OSU any more. But it is naive to keep acting as though nothing anyone is saying can be believed because of the sources. The reason guys are having to defend themselves against such shady characters is because they chose to run with shady characters. You can't blame the crowd when you are the crowd.

  Couldn't have said it better myself.
• enigmaax

  Writerbuckeye;806334 wrote:The article wasn't meant to actually create problems for Tressel directly.
  
  It was a hit piece.
  
  It's sole purpose was to set a sleazy atmosphere and make it appear as if that is the usual atmosphere that surrounds Ohio State football.
  
  As someone who has actually worked in the profession, I'd argue that it takes not risk at all on the part of the writer. The people involved are public figures. Nobody is likely to sue; and they sure as hell aren't likely to win anything in court.
  
  The hard part would have been if the writer had done his job correctly and actually corroborated what he found with more than the criminals and anonymous sources he used.
  
  By the way...some people like to see their names in print and get attention. That's why criminals and others say stuff like this. It's not like they have a history of doing the right thing.

  
  With whom would he have corroborated the info? I may be wrong about this (and I'll admit it if I am - not going to go back and read the article), but didn't the people named decline to comment for the article? You have two sides - the "bad" guys who were there and the students who were there. Who else besides those "bad" guys is going to know anything about what really happened. And the students have every motivation in the world to lie. So in your opinion, the writer should have just disregarded everything and sat on the firsthand account that he had?
• jordo212000

  

  The article wasn't meant to actually create problems for Tressel directly.
  
  
  
  It was a hit piece.
  
  
  
  It's sole purpose was to set a sleazy atmosphere and make it appear as if that is the usual atmosphere that surrounds Ohio State football.
  
  
  
  As someone who has actually worked in the profession, I'd argue that it takes not risk at all on the part of the writer. The people involved are public figures. Nobody is likely to sue; and they sure as hell aren't likely to win anything in court.
  
  
  
  The hard part would have been if the writer had done his job correctly and actually corroborated what he found with more than the criminals and anonymous sources he used.
  
  
  
  By the way...some people like to see their names in print and get attention. That's why criminals and others say stuff like this. It's not like they have a history of doing the right thing.

  
  
  With whom would he have corroborated the info? I may be wrong about this (and I'll admit it if I am - not going to go back and read the article), but didn't the people named decline to comment for the article? You have two sides - the "bad" guys who were there and the students who were there. Who else besides those "bad" guys is going to know anything about what really happened. And the students have every motivation in the world to lie. So in your opinion, the writer should have just disregarded everything and sat on the firsthand account that he had?

  I think we both might as well give up. Some people just can't take off the fan glasses with things involving their team.
• sleeper

  

  jordo212000;806352 wrote:I think we both might as well give up. Some people just can't take off the fan glasses with things involving their team.

  
  So again, are we to believe everything that the media writes? Their incentive isn't to be proper journalists and report credible news, their incentive is to sell magazines and gain hits on their website. There's no disincentive to just throw a bunch of shit out there on a juicy topic.
  
  I don't think most Buckeye fans have blinders on, we just simply aren't eating up every garbage article that gets posted like everyone who doesn't have "blinders" on.
• Writerbuckeye

  

  jordo212000;806352 wrote:I think we both might as well give up. Some people just can't take off the fan glasses with things involving their team.

  
  If you can't verify information, you don't run the story. Simple journalism 101. Fan glasses have nothing to do with it.
  
  I've already said I have no problem with any punishment OSU gets as a result of PROVEN infractions. I don't like shoddy journalism; I especially don't like it when it affects some one or some thing I care about. I doubt you any of you do, either.
  
  As I have said before: I saw this same pattern of journalistic abuses with the Clarett case. So much similarity in the lack of credible information and reporters making judgments, drawing conclusions and casting aspersions while ignoring basic journalism tenets just to get a story out there. It was disgusting then; it's disgusting now.
  
  It makes the entire profession look even worse than its already poor public image -- and that's hard to do in this day and age.
• jordo212000

  

  Writerbuckeye;806442 wrote:If you can't verify information, you don't run the story. Simple journalism 101. Fan glasses have nothing to do with it.
  
  I've already said I have no problem with any punishment OSU gets as a result of PROVEN infractions. I don't like shoddy journalism; I especially don't like it when it affects some one or some thing I care about. I doubt you any of you do, either.
  
  As I have said before: I saw this same pattern of journalistic abuses with the Clarett case. So much similarity in the lack of credible information and reporters making judgments, drawing conclusions and casting aspersions while ignoring basic journalism tenets just to get a story out there. It was disgusting then; it's disgusting now.
  
  It makes the entire profession look even worse than its already poor public image -- and that's hard to do in this day and age.

  
  AGAIN. What exactly do you want the writer to do? Would a picture of the players holding drugs and money while at the same time holding two forms of government ID satisfy you haha? Like others have said, why on Earth would the writer and those in the story have any reason to lie? They didn't say the whole team, or "well it looked like this guy", they gave concrete names. Most of the evidence was surely from first hand accounts. Why does the fact that these guys are low lifes make it less believable, especially when the players they are implicating were supposedly partaking in the same activities. By your line of reasoning, the players have just as much credibility. Add to the fact that they have something to lose, I think they have even less credibility. The guy rotting in prison giving details to a SI writer has nothing to gain from this. It's not a criminal case, so his cooperation did nothing for him
  
  Besides, if this is untrue, and the players did nothing wrong... sue the writer. Take him to court. If you have nothing to hide, bring the writer down. (I hope that those are innocent do). However, I'm think the vast majority of guys will hope that this stuff just goes away quietly.
  
  You keep saying you want proof. What more can the writer get you? He provided testimony from those who were inside the parlor.
• jordo212000

  

  Writerbuckeye;806442 wrote:If you can't verify information, you don't run the story. Simple journalism 101.

  
  Also, how do you know he cannot "verify" information? Just curious. He has already claimed he has more info in his back pocket.
• jordo212000

  

  writerbuckeye, so let me get this straight, in all of your years of "writing," you have never used a first person account as part of your story? What happens when you weren't present at the place where a story took place? What happened when there weren't pictures or video? Did you refuse to write the story?
  
  If your defense continues to be that the people that are feeding the information are not credible, it appears as if we should all misbehave in places like this tattoo parlor. We can always use your patented "those people in that parlor are criminals, therefore we can't believe them" defense.
• Writerbuckeye

  

  jordo212000;806476 wrote:writerbuckeye, so let me get this straight, in all of your years of "writing," you have never used a first person account as part of your story? What happens when you weren't present at the place where a story took place? What happened when there weren't pictures or video? Did you refuse to write the story?
  
  If your defense continues to be that the people that are feeding the information are not credible, it appears as if we should all misbehave in places like this tattoo parlor. We can always use your patented "those people in that parlor are criminals, therefore we can't believe them" defense.

  
  Why the quotes around writing? I was a reporter, I did stories. I did some investigative stories. One got the head of the welfare office fired, another ended the career of a Municipal Court judge.
  
  I had first person account stories, of course. But I also had documents in both cases that proved they were doing something wrong. I also had more than one first-person account, and it was from people who actually had credibility. If I had used sources like those in the SI story, my piece would have never been printed and my editor would probably have booted me out of the newsroom.
  
  And let me say this once more for emphasis: IF YOU DON'T HAVE CREDIBLE PROOF OF ALLEGATIONS YOU DON'T RUN THE STORY.
  
  Why is that so hard to understand. There are literally thousands of stories every year that don't get printed or broadcast because reporters can't verify them enough to make them credible.
  
  And Jordo....why do you think prosecutors have a rough time taking to court for trial a lot of crimes that involve people with criminal backgrounds, or ones that happen in bad locations? Same problem...credibility...and it gets people acquitted all the time. Juries don't like witnesses that have criminal backgrounds.
  
  Finally, I've already said that lawsuits in these kinds of stories almost never happen because (1) you can make a good case that football players at OSU are public figures and therefore open game for stories, making libel damn near impossible to prove; and (2) it's very expensive and difficult to prove libel under the best of circumstances. The laws are purposely set up that way to protect freedom of speech. No lawyer is going to take a case like that without cash up front, and these families generally don't have the cash.
  
  You both already know all this stuff, you just don't want to believe it.
• KnightRyder

  

  Writerbuckeye;806491 wrote:Why the quotes around writing? I was a reporter, I did stories. I did some investigative stories. One got the head of the welfare office fired, another ended the career of a Municipal Court judge.
  
  I had first person account stories, of course. But I also had documents in both cases that proved they were doing something wrong. I also had more than one first-person account, and it was from people who actually had credibility. If I had used sources like those in the SI story, my piece would have never been printed and my editor would probably have booted me out of the newsroom.
  
  And let me say this once more for emphasis: IF YOU DON'T HAVE CREDIBLE PROOF OF ALLEGATIONS YOU DON'T RUN THE STORY.
  
  Why is that so hard to understand. There are literally thousands of stories every year that don't get printed or broadcast because reporters can't verify them enough to make them credible.
  
  And Jordo....why do you think prosecutors have a rough time taking to court for trial a lot of crimes that involve people with criminal backgrounds, or ones that happen in bad locations? Same problem...credibility...and it gets people acquitted all the time. Juries don't like witnesses that have criminal backgrounds.
  
  Finally, I've already said that lawsuits in these kinds of stories almost never happen because (1) you can make a good case that football players at OSU are public figures and therefore open game for stories, making libel damn near impossible to prove; and (2) it's very expensive and difficult to prove libel under the best of circumstances. The laws are purposely set up that way to protect freedom of speech. No lawyer is going to take a case like that without cash up front, and these families generally don't have the cash.
  
  You both already know all this stuff, you just don't want to believe it.

  
  yea you cant believe criminals. i wonder why law enforcement uses them as informants. furthemore Whiner the NCAA hearing isnt a court of law. no one is sworn in witnessed arent called and hearsay is acceptable. remember when usc went down they just had the hearsay from few flunkies from reggie bush's and o j mayo's crew. and it was mainly centered around 2 athletes. they have much more on OSU.
• vball10set

  KnightRyder;807735 wrote: they have much more on OSU.

  
  says you?
• KnightRyder

  

  vball10set;807758 wrote:says you?

  
  says tressel when he admitted he lied and tried to cover it up. did you forget about that?
• Writerbuckeye

  

  KnightRyder;807735 wrote:yea you cant believe criminals. i wonder why law enforcement uses them as informants. furthemore Whiner the NCAA hearing isnt a court of law. no one is sworn in witnessed arent called and hearsay is acceptable. remember when usc went down they just had the hearsay from few flunkies from reggie bush's and o j mayo's crew. and it was mainly centered around 2 athletes. they have much more on OSU.

  
  They also had a ton of documents in that case, as a result of the lawsuit Bush was involved in -- and the stuff Yahoo dug up. Don't act like the stories are even in the same dimension, let alone the same hemisphere. They aren't. Yahoo did it correctly and corroborated stuff with a nice paper trail. SI had nothing but hearsay from anonymous and shady sources.
  
  As for what the criminal justice system does: yes, they use criminals as witnesses all the time, but they also SETTLE more cases than go to trial, because they don't want to use witnesses that aren't credible to a jury. It's better not to take chances and get what you can in the way of a sentence.
• KnightRyder

  

  Writerbuckeye;808539 wrote:They also had a ton of documents in that case, as a result of the lawsuit Bush was involved in -- and the stuff Yahoo dug up. Don't act like the stories are even in the same dimension, let alone the same hemisphere. They aren't. Yahoo did it correctly and corroborated stuff with a nice paper trail. SI had nothing but hearsay from anonymous and shady sources.
  
  As for what the criminal justice system does: yes, they use criminals as witnesses all the time, but they also SETTLE more cases than go to trial, because they don't want to use witnesses that aren't credible to a jury. It's better not to take chances and get what you can in the way of a sentence.

  they had documents but none leading back to USC. The NCAA went on Lloyd Lakes testimony . Even with the NCAA admitting that Lake is a questionable witness at best (as you would say felon with a axe to grind), they still used his testimony to nail USC. law enforcement uses criminals to testify in court all the time who are you kidding.
• Writerbuckeye

  

  Have you ever actually talked to a prosecutor about using criminals as witnesses and the problems of proving a case in doing so? I have. You conveniently ignored my main point: MOST criminal cases are settled via plea bargaining, and a lot of that has to do with not wanting to use criminals as witnesses because juries simply don't like/trust them.
• DeyDurkie5

  

  gibby has struck again
• KnightRyder

  

  Writerbuckeye;808702 wrote:Have you ever actually talked to a prosecutor about using criminals as witnesses and the problems of proving a case in doing so? I have. You conveniently ignored my main point: MOST criminal cases are settled via plea bargaining, and a lot of that has to do with not wanting to use criminals as witnesses because juries simply don't like/trust them.

  
  like in the jim traficant case?
• OneBuckeye

  

  According to 11W the SI reporters are heading back to columbus to do some more crack reporting. lol