Steve and I have been sparring lately over the credibility issues inherent in the whole Roberts-Rodriguez brouhaha. We recently debated the issue by email, and the following is our unedited conversation. I post it because I think a lot of the pertinent issues from both sides of the fence are brought up, and encourage you to post in the comments section your thoughts on both the specific issues raised here and the broader issues of anonymous sourcing and journalistic credibility as well.
Moshe: The upcoming Selena Roberts book seems to be thinly sourced and based primarily on hearsay. That being said, you seem fairly confident that most of the allegations will be shown to be true. Why so? Also, do questions about Roberts credibility temper your conclusions?
Steve: Its the nature of the book business and journalism, which I don’t think either Alex or his defenders understand.
First, you can’t publish allegations like she’s made without having multiple sources. If not, you can get sued for millions and you can’t stay in the Book business for long getting your ass sued off all the time. If anything, I guarantee she had loads of other material which wound up getting edited out by the legal staff because it wasn’t solid enough legally.
Second, these lines of inquiry, even the ones getting into his personal life, are all fair game. Alex is the one who has presented himself as things which he is not. He presented himself as the “Clean HR King”, the steroid information she dug up found that to be a lie. He talks the game of a good teammate, the stories about him hitting on teammates wives show that wasn’t true. He’s presented himself as having an enormous respect for the game, the pitch tipping scandal showed that to be bogus. He presented himself as a ‘clean liver’, the endless parade of floozies and PED’s show that to be false. Over and over again, Alex is the one who has sold a story to the public which was false. Roberts has simply exposed Alex’s own lies for what they are. Don’t shoot the messenger. When a high profile Televagelist is caught in a hotel room with a hooker, its big news. Why? Because he has presented himself as something he is not. Alex has done the same thing for
years. Had he said nothing, it would be nobody’s business. But he brought it up, so its open season.
Finally, Selena did nothing wrong in the Duke Lacrosse pieces. First, she was writing editorials for the Times back then, not hard news pieces. She was entitled to her opinion and it was a reasonable one given what we knew when they were written. People seem to forget the context in which those pieces were written. Her sources for those pieces were people that came from the prosecutor’s office. The same office where the DA was thrown out of office and disbarred for suppressing evidence. If the DA was her source, its easy to see how and why she was mislead. A journalist is only as good as her sources, and if one of them is willing to go so far in lying to a Grand Jury, I see no reason to believe he didn’t lie to her as well. She believed him, and got burned as a result. It happens, but she didn’t do anything wrong as an editorial writer, whose job it is to take sides in debates.
Moshe:I have to disagree on multiple fronts. Firstly, while she may have multiple sources, none of them actually know anything, as all she has in terms of evidence is speculation and hearsay from various anonymous players. In regard to the pitch-tipping in particular, multiple Rangers have come out and refuted that story. Conversely, Shane Spencer, who is admittedly one of Roberts’ sources, said that it was a rumor that he heard in the clubhouse, and that if he had actually seen it, he would have stopped it. Multiple Rangers have echoed that thought. When the book places stories with hard evidence (the 2003 failed drug test) alongside those that are based on innuendo and rumors, and presents them both as being equally valid and equally supported, that is irresponsible and journalistic malpractice.
I think another issue here is the dichotomy between the two types of information that Roberts is trying to sell here. On the one hand, she wants the book to be taken seriously as a journalistic endeavor. On the other hand, she puts forth the Page 6 type stuff, which is certainly fair game, but is something that I think detracts from the legitimacy of her important arguments. People find it hard to take the pitch tipping allegation seriously when it is pages from an “undertipping in Hooters” allegation.
Lastly, you are way off on the Duke Lacrosse case. She misrepresented evidence and was rebuked by her editors for that. She turned the entire case into a broader racial and class based issue, almost single-handedly starting a furor and alleging a coverup that did not exist. Worst of all, she never apologized. In fact, she specifically did the opposite, stating that her columns remained true even after the charges were dropped. She convicted the players in the court of public opinion without a trial, and most importantly in terms of analogizing to our current situation, did nothing to corroborate evidence. Why should her journalistic integrity and ability to follow-up properly on bits of evidence be trusted now? Why should I believe that she is not, once again, depending on innuendo and faulty sources? Why didn’t she speak to Michael Young, Alex’s closest friend? She has been writing anti-Alex columns for a while now, and I do not think that she deserves the benefit of the doubt here, considering her past.
Steve: On The Duke case, we know the prosecutor mislead everyone, including the grand jury. Why you fail to cut her any slack for being mislead (as many other journalists were) makes no sense to me. She didn’t apologize because she was editorializing based on bad information, she’s not a mind reader or a fortune teller. The kidnapping and sexual offense charges were still pending against all three players even after the charges were initially dropped. The prosecutor wasn’t convicted of wrongdoing until 7 months after the charges were dropped. Its easy to look back now and criticize, but given what she knew at the time her positions were pointed (as a good editorial should be) but understandable.
Moshe: Nope. Firstly, there was evidence upon which she was not mislead- she mischaracterized certain items as court documents when they were nothing of the sort, and the Times was forced to issue an apology. Further, a journalist who is mislead by a source should certainly apologize, and I am not sure what the rationale against that would be. If you judge people based on faulty information, you need to make amends when the information turns out to be false. Additionally, her editor admitted that they were negligent in not realizing the nature of the prosecutor, and were certainly at fault for failing to corroborate any of the evidence that they were fed. You stated that these stories always have multiple sources. It seems that Roberts has a history of going forward with a story with just one source, comfortable in its accuracy as long as it fits with her agenda.
Steve: A journalist who is mislead by a source has no obligation to apologize. How would that exactly go? “I was lied to and therefore I’m sorry”? Makes no sense.
And multiple sources are required for news pieces, not editorials. Editorials are as the old saying goes ‘one man’s opinion’. Or in this case, one woman’s. You and I opine on single sources every day of the week. The vast majority of TYU posts are based on one source or article. Yet Selena Roberts isn’t allowed to for some reason. Someone needs to explain that to me.
Moshe: ”I was lied to and therefore I am sorry.” Basically- or more accurately- “I am sorry for the judgements that I made based on bad information that were printed in the world’s largest newspaper without any independent corroboration.”
In regard to the one source thing, this is a blog. We do not get paid for this, nor are we expected to have the same journalistic standards, in terms of sources, that an editorialist for the NY Times should have.
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14 Responses to Debate: A-Rod, Selena Roberts, And Credibility
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I couldn’t agree more with Moshe (or less with Steve). Steve, I wonder if perhaps you are an attorney. Your argument is strictly based upon legal lines, but really aren’t we talking more about credibility and integrity here? Sure, Selena had no legal requirement to apologize, but for crying out loud, anyone with a conscience and some professional integrity would have apologized in a second. Unfortunately, there are many out there that are strictly concerned with their own careers and will do anything they can legally or not to get ahead. Perhaps Ms. Roberts operates within the bounds of the law, but her tactics and style leave me feeling as if I need a shower.
Agreed. I think you bring up an interesting point, about the gap between morals and law. Law is supposed to reflect our morality, but in actuality, there are a lot of gaps between the two areas. How people act in those gaps is really the measure of the person- what do you do when the law says yes but morality says no?
I find it interesting he thought I was the attorney and you weren’t.
HIT THOSE BOOKS MO!
I am particularly biased against her because I can’t stand people who can’t admit they’re wrong and I find it particularly scary when these types of people are pundits. Everybody makes mistakes. It’s the ones who think they’re infallible that are the most dangerous. She basically called these kids subhuman! She said they engaged in conduct “that threatens to belie their social standing as human beings.” No apologies for name calling, Steve?
I heard her interviewed just last week and she still refuses to admit she did anything wrong in the Duke case. Yes, Steve, her opinions WERE understandable at the time, but now they are clearly not. If I called you and all your friends out for being rapists and subhumans, got you kicked out of school or fired from your job, do you think it would be right if I kept heaping insults upon you even after it was proven that you were framed? I think the whole business is very sleazy and shows a scary tendency of her to jump to conclusions and engage in revisionist history.
Just because they are opinions doesn’t mean you’re not responsible for presenting the right facts. You have all sorts of crazy people who spout hate all over the place. You have holocaust deniers who latch onto crazy sources and represent them as reliable and real. Just because that’s their “opinion” and their sources are lying, doesn’t make it okay. Yes, that’s an extreme example, but it shows that “opinions” can also be damaging and filled with hateful agendas.
Amen!
Her record is that she doesn’t give a damn about the facts-she’ll write the most sensational stuff without a shred of evidence, and will refuse to even discuss where she got the stuff.
Calling her a journalist is a joke. She has zero integrity.
“She said they engaged in conduct “that threatens to belie their social standing as human beings.” No apologies for name calling, Steve?”
That sounds like name calling, until you factor in their social standing, which was quite high. What she is saying there is that these are young men who come from privileged backgrounds and go to Ivy League schools and were acting like animals. Neither side disputed that the boys behavior was horrible or that they treated the girl disrespectfully, the question was whether the girl was raped or not. “Belies their social standing” (Ivy Leaguers) “as human beings” (acted like a pack of wolves) Its a well written statement.
“Neither side disputed that the boys behavior was horrible or that they treated the girl disrespectfully, the question was whether the girl was raped or not.”
Actually, one of the kids disputed that quite well, his claim was that he wasn’t even there, he left when the stripper came, and he did have proof.
She still seems angry that these kids aren’t in jail now, even though they are innocent, which I find quite disturbing. It should also be noted, that she not only has not apologized for her statements about those kids. She has never, ever, and still doesn’t even show remorse about what happened to them, yet, to this very day, she still holds them in contempt.
If she “issues” regarding those 3 kids still lingers, God only knows how compromised her journalistic credibility is.
I am a little biased but, I and many others like me (Army) have been slim-ed for years.
With this in mind, I wholeheartedly disagree with Steve.
I studied Journalism in Collage, if I had written the stuff she has (with only one source) it would have been spiked. The rule had always been Multiple sources or Documentation. I realize times have changed but, ones veracity should never be a question.
I think the “Freedom of the Press” has been used and abused for a lot of years, it is about time to make them responsible for what they print.
Also Steve, very few times has a Public Figure (as A-Rod is) have ever won a suit against a magazine or newspaper. They get away with it 99.9% of the time, and make a lot of money doing it. The old saying of “Follow the money”, applies here…don’t you think?
How pissed must Roberts be about this Manny news? Her buzz lasted all of two days.
I really like this one.
I don’t agree with Steve at all. Unnamed sources, particularly when there is a lack of multiple sources or much other evidence at all, is NOT journalism or publishing.
In fact, I’m actually surprised that this book was published at all in its current state. 19 unnamed sources for a journalist who totally botched a national story, attacking children no less, seems a bit extreme.
I guess the book is just like Arod himself, all about money. No substance.
I know people on the Duke lacrosse team and I can tell you first hand that not all of them are from a privileged background. Some of them are, but that overall is a generalization created by the story. Also, it wasn’t a coincidence that the three kids that were prosecuted were from a privileged background.
Steve, do you think it was appropriate for Selena Roberts to call A-Rod “a slumlord,” and compare him to “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and Mr. Potter from “It’s a Wonderful Life”?
Also, are you aware of the other sourcing problems in her book? It’s not just the anonymous quotes; it’s that she mixes in her interviews with quotes from other interviews and never says which is which. There are no endnotes and no footnotes – just a list of interview subject names at the end and the newspapers, books and web sites she used. It’s as if she wanted to obfuscate not just her anonymous sources, but her named ones, as well as the quotes she used from other reporters.
And finally, if every baseball player pretending to be a family man while getting something on the side were worthy of a journalistic expose, it would single-handedly save the news industry.
This gossip masquerading as a reporter is a hack. Her handling of the Duke case was an abomination. Take a look at her interview on The Big Lead two years after the facts where she still decides to verbally bash the players and skirts the issue stating that a rape did not need to have occurred for them to be guilty. She unequivocally was willing to state that “something” happened that night, condemn the accused and the larger team and never looked back when the evidence came to light that there was no rape. She allowed herself to be mislead because that helped confirm her preconceived notions.
And if you want to state she was editorializing in the Duke case, she is now representing herself as an investigative reporter with a book that might not even pass the standards set by some of the more legitimate tabloids published in this country. The allegations about his steroid use in high school are especially comical amongst endless pages of innuendo and speculation. Only in America can you get paid to write this, then interviewed like you are something more than a High School chick gossiping about her friends.
So happy this mannny thing broke this week and she is getting pushed to the side.