Journalistic standards in reporting of the Te’o hoax: Q&A wi

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Journalistic standards in reporting of the Te’o hoax: Q&A wi

Postby admin » Wed Jul 22, 2015 5:47 am

Journalistic standards in reporting of the Te’o hoax: Q&A with Deadspin’s Tommy Craggs
by Manny Randhawa
Feb. 26, 2013

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Image
Manti Te’o talks to press prior to the BCS bowl game in Miami earlier this year. (Photo by Matt Velazquez)

Editor’s Note: Certain language in the responses below that was deemed inappropriate for this forum has been omitted. Such omissions are denoted with a bracket [ ]. The context and meaning of the responses, however, have not been altered in any way as a result.

It was “a question of journalistic standards.”

That’s how The New York Times described the rationale of ESPN executives in their decision not to publish the Manti Te’o girlfriend hoax story based on the information they had on January 16th, the same day that Deadspin decided to go ahead with the now famous scoop. “We were close,” ESPN’s Senior Vice President and Director of News Vince Doria told The Times. “We wanted to be very careful.”

While some of the network’s executives reportedly regretted being beaten to the story by Deadspin – which The Boston Globe‘s Jim McBride called “a website that has broken some high-profile stories but not an outlet regarded for journalistic standards” – the investigation and reporting of Deadspin’s story raise the question of whether the Te’o hoax revelation was the result of responsible journalism or a case in which an entity that broke a big story without completing its due diligence got lucky that it was right.

Washington Post contributor Erik Wemple described Deadspin‘s investigation this way: “Deadspin never got Tuiasosopo [the confessed perpetrator of the hoax] on the line to hear his side of the story. Nor did it get Te’o or his father or Notre Dame. It also wrote a media story without consulting all the various media outlets that fell for the hoax.” Beyond reporting on the hoax itself, Deadspin also included quotes from an unnamed source in its original story that strongly implied Te’o’s own involvement in the ruse.

Since the story broke, both Te’o and Tuiasosopo have come forward and said that Te’o had absolutely nothing to do with the hoax.

In light of comments that have been made by Deadspin Editor-In-Chief Tommy Craggs about established news outlets such as The Boston Globe (calling the paper “a craven, slipshod outfit”) and ESPN (calling the network “a terrible company full of craven morons”), does Deadspin have standing to level such criticism given its own standards of journalism?

The National Sports Journalism Center sought answers about Deadspin‘s reporting on the Te’o story from Craggs, who edited and made the decision to publish it last month.

Q: What was the first indication that there was a real story here? Reporter Timothy Burke said that Deadspin received an anonymous email stating that there was “something fishy” about the Te’o girlfriend story. How did things progress from that email to a decision to pursue the story?

A: We got a tip around 4:30 p.m., Jan. 11. That was a Friday, five days before our story ran. The email read in part: “I know you guys get thousands of tips that are ‘out there’ or crazy. This is one that should really be looked into. I was born and raised a Laie Boy on the North Shore of Oahu. While Manti Te’o is a loved native son here in Hawaii he is also a fraud. The story about his girlfriend dying is completely made up. It is a case of the media simply being too sensitive and shocked to actually look into it.”

By that evening, we’d dropped a plumb line into the hole at the center of the dead-girlfriend story. We’d done a ton of googling and some quiet, on-little-cat-feet reporting (we didn’t want to alert anyone, hoaxers and media alike, that we were on the case), and we knew enough to know we had something–we weren’t sure what it was yet.

Q: Ed Sherman wrote the following about a quote toward the end of the Deadspin story on the Te’o girlfriend hoax: “If I’m the editor, I don’t let that quote go through. Who was this friend of Tuiasosopo? Was this person also involved? Friends have a tendency to talk out of school. Maybe this person exaggerated the quote just to be part of the story?” and “So now you’re running an incredibly damning quote from a single source who likely doesn’t know the complete story. 80 percent sure is long way from 100 percent sure in this instance.”

How do you respond to that? What’s the rationale behind adding that friend’s opinion in the piece at all? In light of ESPN’s report that Ronaiah Tuiasosopo admitted to the hoax and that Te’o was not involved in it, does the quote in the Deadspin story accomplish anything other than leading the reader to believe that Te’o was somehow involved?

A: This is a concern troll’s complaint. It’s moronic. That’s a quote from a source who knew both the hoax and hoaxer better than anyone we’d spoken with. It contains its own grain of salt. Eighty percent is not 100 percent: congratulations, Ed Sherman, you can understand the basic English words and number concepts that went into the quote. Yet 80 percent is nevertheless “incredibly damning.”

There are 2,000 words of context preceding that quote, context that was perfectly understood by everyone who read the story except committed Notre Dame truthers and certain willfully dense journalists who were determined to remind people that Deadspin isn’t real journalism. When the story broke, almost none of the people who gleefully jumped on Manti Te’o pulled out that quote to make the case. Only retroactively did people decide this had been the prosecutorial pivot of the piece.

Here’s what we knew at the time we wrote the story:

1. Manti Te’o’s dead girlfriend was a hoax.

2. Manti Te’o had told lies about his dead girlfriend to help create the published stories about his dead girlfriend.

The evidence supported–and, frankly, still supports–a degree of skepticism about the Manti-as-duped-romantic story. We wanted to relay our source’s belief and be transparent about his uncertainty. There is nothing outrageous about that. A newspaper would’ve written it up as “a source strongly believes etc.,” and no one would’ve said [anything]. (Take the fourth graf here, for example: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/sport ... wanted=all)

Again, I know why that criticism is being leveled. It’s not an epistemological issue, even though it’s being couched smarmily as one. It’s just a way of saying, “Don’t forget–Deadspin is still scurrilous crap.” If it hadn’t been the 80 percent quote, it would’ve been something else. (I’ve seen a handful [of] journalists bitching that we didn’t give Manti or Notre Dame enough time to respond, which is ridiculous given both the observer effect of reporting a story like this and the fact that both Notre Dame and Manti were prepared to go public with the story.)

Q: Deadspin then came out with another post on the same day the ESPN Outside the Lines report on Tuiasosopo’s confession came out, naming the “80 percent sure” source (Vaosa) and continuing to use the quote under a headline that included the phrase: “Was Te’o Involved? Evidence Varies.”

Again, what is the rationale for continuing to use Vaosa when doing so could arguably suggest that Te’o was involved, before all of the relevant information, including Te’o’s own testimony regarding the matter, had come out? (In his interview with ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap, airing after the above-mentioned Deadspin post was published, Te’o denies being involved in the hoax)

A: We weren’t just using Vaosa. We were also using Te’o’s own comments about his girlfriend (and those of his father), and our own judgment that Te’o’s new account wasn’t squaring with everything else we’d learned to that point. (And for the record, we mentioned that quote again to point out that the same person who led Shelley Smith to the source to whom Ronaiah had confessed–and supposedly absolved Manti–was the same person who had expressed doubts to us about Manti’s innocence. That seemed relevant.)

In any case, we saw no reason not to remain skeptical of a guy who had just copped to “tailoring” the story of the dead love of his life to the same media through which he was now asserting his innocence in heavily brokered interviews.

Q: Tom Scocca told The Washington Post: “Craggs kept popping up out of his chair and pacing, asking, ‘Is there any way we could have gotten this wrong?’ Then he would sit down again and then pop up again.” The author of the WP blog post wrote: “Deadspin never got Tuiasosopo on the line to hear his side of the story. Nor did it get Te’o or his father or Notre Dame. It also wrote a media story without consulting all the various media outlets that fell for the hoax. Why would it publish without those critical components? Competition.”

Does competition justify publishing the story without, as the blogger writes, “those critical components”? Couldn’t the story run even after such a press conference took place or “friendly” story was published, once those important components had been added to ensure accuracy?

Based on what Scocca said about your concern over whether you might’ve “gotten this wrong,” it’s clear that you felt there was some risk involved with publishing the story when you did. What is Deadspin’s policy on how certain it has to be before publishing a story? Is it 80 percent, like the quote from the friend cited in the last question? If the policy is that something less than 100% certainty is acceptable in some cases, how is that determined?

What if it turns out that some or all of the information in a story is incorrect? Does Deadspin have a correction policy? There doesn’t appear to be one posted on the site if there is. If one exists, what is it and where is it displayed?

A: [OK, this is Scocca, to address this particular point: This idea that the anecdote about Craggs pacing and fretting represents some sign that we knew we were running with a shaky story–this is utter crap. I knew Wemple was smart enough to understand what I was talking about, but I hadn’t imagined how stupid some of his readers and the right-thinking press people would turn out to be.

I’m going to use really […] small words here. The story was solid. But it said that a lot of other stories had been wrong. Everyone wrote that this girlfriend was real. We knew she wasn’t. This is a weird situat–this is a weird thing. A weird place to be. Telling everyone they’re wrong!

Maybe someday, if the people who complained about this anecdote work hard, they will do the same thing. They will write a story that tells people that something they believe in is really not true. It feels freaky. How could all those people be wrong? If they are not crazy, they will wonder if they somehow, somehow got it wrong, even if they are sure from all the facts that they are right. This is what was going on. Tommy Craggs knew that the facts were right. But like any normal person, he found it strange that the true facts were the opposite of the facts that other people had written. So until someone else said, yes, you are right, and everyone else is wrong, he worried. Luckily our story was so right, it did not take long for someone to say that.]

(Craggs:) We did what we could to get those “critical components,” but we weren’t betting our shirts that Notre Dame or anyone from the Te’o camp would to talk to us. It’s fun to imagine some frictionless plane of journalism where potentially hostile sources return phone calls and grudgingly fill in all the blanks out of some sense of duty to the truth, but that’s now what we were working with. If we’d sat on the story for a day, maybe even hours, I have no doubt we would’ve been scooped by the story’s own principals, to say nothing of ESPN.

You’re misreading a native and natural anxiety over a big story as doubts about its veracity. We were reporting that the whole world had gotten something very wrong. If you don’t feel the least bit nervous after hitting the publish button on a story like that, you’re a better man than I.

Our corrections policy is to correct our mistakes. Is that a good enough answer? I get the sense from these questions that you’re trying to measure the distance between what we do and what Responsible Journalists do. So I’ll help: Is our bar for publishing lower than, say, The New York Times‘s? Of course. Have we published stories that lacked perfect, according-to-Hoyle sourcing? Yes. We’re a tabloid at heart. You ask if we have a policy. There is no policy for this, or for anything, really. The whole point of the company is that we trust our reporters to be smart and judicious without having to adopt the ethical pretense that what they’re doing is anything but a sort of professionalized rudeness. I’ll get killed for this, but: Journalism ethics is nothing more than a measure of the scurrilousness your brand will bear. That’s it. Ethics has nothing to do with the truth of things, only with the proper etiquette for obtaining it, so as to piss off the fewest number of people possible. That works fine for a lot of news outlets; we don’t have to worry about niceties.

Q: USA Today reported on the challenges facing sports journalists (and journalists in general) in this ever-changing digital age, in the wake of the Te’o controversy: “new questions are arising about the media’s obligation to fact-check details even amid tighter deadlines, shrinking newsroom staffs and the ceaseless chatter blaring across social media.”

Social media seems to be a significant source for Deadspin’s content. Has the Te’o situation made you look at Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms differently in terms of utilizing them for reporting purposes when this hoax has exposed just how deceptive information disseminated over social media can be?

A: That’s how we’ve always treated Twitter and Facebook. What the story showed me, at least, was the importance of both knowing all the resources at your disposal–Tim Burke found the woman in the “Lennay Kekua” photos via a series of reverse/related image searches–and being clever and tireless about using them.

Q: You said in your interview with Poynter that you “have less sympathy for the folks who crafted those painstaking ‘Love Story’-in-cleats feature stories about Manti and his dead girlfriend. Those were dumb, infantilizing stories to begin with, and they were executed poorly and sloppily, and if there’s any lesson to be drawn from this, it’s that this kind of simpering crap should be eliminated from the sports pages entirely.”

Given the inherent inconsistency between publishing a story with concern over its accuracy after-the-fact, as Scocca talked about with the WP, and criticizing other media outlets for “not getting it right,” how would you respond to the argument that what Deadspin has done with its reporting of a story without consulting all of the involved parties is just as bad as the “painstaking” efforts you mention above?

Also, do you mean that poorly executed and sloppy versions of such human-interest sports stories should not be published, or that human-interest stories of any kind about athletes don’t belong in sports media?

A: I think I’ve answered the first part of your question, about our “concern over .. accuracy after-the fact,” which, again, is based on a misreading that makes my eyes roll into the back of my head and out the other side.

I’ll address the latter question: The Te’o myth was stupid to begin with and premised on the misbegotten and fundamentally patronizing notion that a football player lifted himself nobly to athletic greatness on the coffins of his dead girlfriend and grandmother. Is that a “human interest” story? I dunno. Is there anything human about reducing the complexities of a half-known situation to an old story trope that was tired and worn-out long before the last reel of Knute Rockne, All American?

What’s so human about treating the tragic death of a young woman as a modular piece of the formula, to be used and set aside–on the one hand, she’s dead; on the other hand, he got two interceptions!

Q: The Boston Globe’s Jim McBride described Deadspin as “a website that has broken some high-profile stories but not an outlet regarded for journalistic standards.” In response, you told Poynter: “Whatever. Why should I care what a craven, slipshod outfit like the Boston Globe thinks of my ‘journalistic standards’?”

Apart from being indifferent to what someone at The Globe thinks about Deadspin’s journalistic standards, how do you respond to that statement? How would you characterize your journalistic standards? Some would argue that headlines such as “Lance Armstrong’s Biggest Crime was Being a Huge A–hole,” and posting and responding to reader comments/questions such as “I want to film myself having sex with my wife without her knowing,” characterize poor or nonexistent journalistic standards. How do you respond?

A: I think I’ve answered this. Two things, though: What the hell does using the word “asshole” have to do with journalistic standards? You’re conflating decorum with reporting. And it’s literally half a century since those particular standards of decorum were generally applicable. As for the reader questions–in addition to its various advice columns, sometimes addressing sex questions, the Boston Globe runs a daily “Astrological Forecast” column, complete with lucky numbers for your birthday. Fraudulent, superstitious garbage. Does that mean they have nonexistent journalistic standards? No, the soft sections are the soft sections. Using them to characterize a whole publication betrays a basic ignorance of the industry.

Q: With respect to the reporting on the Te’o situation, Deadspin’ s post “ESPN Reports Ronaiah Tuisosopo [sic] Confessed to Te’o Hoax in December. Was Te’o Involved? Evidence Varies” includes a reader comment at the bottom that reads:

“Look at these f—ing Samoans, with the stripes on their face. They look so sweet, but they lie and now they’re boxed in. I wish they’d take their coconut and go elsewhere. Eh, f— it. Give me three of them plus two Thin Mints.”

This is just one of several comments laced with profanities or racial epithets appearing on Deadspin’s site. Does Deadspin have a policy on the detection and removal of offensive reader comments? If so, what is that policy and where is it displayed?

A: You’re really obsessed with policies, aren’t you? We moderate our comments to the best of our abilities. The commenting system is designed to float the best responses to the top. Bad comments get buried (and occasionally deleted outright).

The comment you cited above does not contain a “racial epithet,” by the way. It’s a joke about Girl Scout cookies. Are there any actual racial epithets you’d like to bring to our attention?
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Re: Journalistic standards in reporting of the Te’o hoax: Q&

Postby admin » Wed Jul 22, 2015 5:51 am

Gawker Sucks
by Drew Johnson
April 13, 2013

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Sloppy tackling or sloppy journalism?

When Deadspin broke news of the Lennay Kekua hoax last January, it quickly became one of the biggest stories in the history of the website. This opened them up to plenty of praise as well as some criticism for how they covered the story, but I noticed something strange that actually happened in the midst of their investigation. Deadspin got their tip about Manti Te'o and Lennay Kekua on Friday, January 11th. Within hours, the editors knew they had something big, and the reveal happened on Wednesday, January 16th.

In between, Deadspin made one post about Te'o, titled: "Manti Te'o's Father Wants You To Unsubscribe From The Honolulu Star-Advertiser Because It Printed A Picture Of His Son Missing A Tackle." As the title implies, Brian Te'o was upset because the Star-Advertiser had run a front-page photo of Manti getting "bowled over" by Eddie Lacy during the BCS title game. It was an embarrassing photo, but you can't deny that is summarized how the game went for Notre Dame. Boycotting the newspaper was an absurd response, and Brian Te'o deserved to be mocked for it. However, Deadspin then took things a step further. The author, Isaac Rauch, wrote:

You have to give the paper credit: they had plenty of opportunity to show pictures of Te'o missing tackles, getting lost in coverage, committing penalties or otherwise fucking up before the final game of his senior season. They had heretofore shown impressive restraint:


Rauch then posted a collection of seven photos that supposedly showed Manti Te'o "fucking up." By doing so, Deadspin was symbolically kicking Te'o while he was down. Many commenters joined in on the heckling, but a few pointed out errors with the post. One commenter, JokeonYou, was annoyed because some of the photos weren't from the 2012 season. Another, AnonDeadspinCommenter, said the picture with Denard Robinson was misconstrued.

I found six of the seven photos that Deadspin used in this Zimbio album, and most of the original captions did not reflect poorly on Manti Te'o. In fact, most of them said Te'o was either making a tackle or breaking up a pass. As an exercise, I tracked down the game footage for each of the seven plays shown in the photos in order to see whose interpretation was accurate.

1.

Image

Game: Notre Dame at Michigan State

Date: September 15th, 2012.

Footage of the play.

Verdict: Te'o makes an immediate tackle on Bell.

2.

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Game: Michigan at Notre Dame

Date: September 22nd, 2012

Footage of the play.

Verdict: Te'o is grabbing at Toussaint's facemask during the tackle. No penalty was called, but even the Zimbio caption mentions the facemask.

3.

Image

Game: Navy vs. Notre Dame at Aviva Stadium

Date: September 1st, 2012

Footage of the play.

Verdict: Te'o makes the tackle on Miller.

4.

Image

Game: Notre Dame at Stanford

Date: November 26th, 2011

Footage of the play.

Verdict: Te'o trips up Luck during a 4-yard gain.

5.

Image

Game: South Florida at Notre Dame

Date: September 3rd, 2011

Footage of the play.

Verdict: Te'o grabs Murray's heel, causing him to stumble after gaining 7 yards. So it's a sub-par tackle.

6.

Image

Game: Stanford at Notre Dame

Date: September 25th, 2010

The game is available on Hulu. Advance the tracker to 1:09:21.

Verdict: Te'o successfully breaks up the pass.

7.

Image

Game: Michigan at Notre Dame

Date: September 11th, 2010

Footage of the play.

Verdict: Te'o drags Robinson down for no gain.

Overall, 5 of the 7 photos definitely show Manti Te'o in the process of making a tackle or breaking up a pass. Another shows Te'o grabbing at an opponent's facemask. Another shows Te'o making a last-ditch attempt to grab an opponent's heel--which technically would count as a tackle.

In the grander scheme of things, Rauch's post isn't a huge deal. But it's just weird how Deadspin would show photos of Manti Te'o sticking tackles and say, 'Here are photos of Manti Te'o missing tackles.' Tommy Craggs, the editor-in-chief of Deadspin, was asked about the site's correction policy during an interview with the National Sports Journalism Center. He replied, "Our corrections policy is to correct our mistakes. Is that a good enough answer for you?" Well, here are some proven mistakes.

I'm not suggesting all the photos be removed. The ones I feel should be removed--based on the evidence--are photos one, three, four, six and seven.
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Re: Journalistic standards in reporting of the Te’o hoax: Q&

Postby admin » Wed Jul 22, 2015 6:04 am

The one thing that didn't add up in Deadspin's coverage of Manti Te'o
by Drew Johnson
May 14, 2013

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When Manti Te'o was drafted last month by the San Diego Chargers, it marked a natural transition point in the catfishing saga.

Deadspin broke the story in January that Manti's dead girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, never existed, and that a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was behind the online persona. Te'o quickly became one of the most disliked athletes in the country—not just because "Lennay Kekua" was a fraud, but because people now assumed Te'o had knowingly lied about her death to garner sympathy.

Deadspin never explicitly said Te'o perpetuated the hoax. However, they presented several clues that Manti and Ronaiah were friends, and they repeated a rumor which implied the two men collaborated together. As Vanity Fair's Ned Zeman explains:

Then came the money shot: “A friend of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo told us he was ‘80 percent sure’ that Manti Te’o was ‘in on it,’ and that the two perpetrated Lennay Kekua’s death with publicity in mind.”

The sentiment was widely shared. That afternoon, ESPN’s on-air news ticker shrank the story to a headline: deadspin reports: 80 percent chance te’o involved in hoax. The ticker failed to mention that the claim was based on speculation by an unnamed source who proved to be wrong. Given that ESPN is to sports media what tass was to the Soviet Union, nightfall brought a riot of screaming media attacks on Te’o.


The general consensus now is that Te'o was very gullible, but that he never participated in the hoax. From the start, I suspected Te'o wasn't in on it. I didn't know much about Te'o's reputation, but I noticed who Deadspin had assigned to the story: Jack Dickey and Timothy Burke. This told me the story would probably wind up being 50% true and 50% B.S.

Now, before going further, I should explain something: I personally don't trust Timothy Burke, and the reason is because I've caught him lying in the past. He was using sockpuppet accounts on the website Reddit to spam his own sports articles. After he got banned for spamming, he went on Twitter and tried pinning the blame on an imaginary pedophile conspiracy. I exposed him when he tried using yet another sockpuppet account.

When you catch someone pulling that type of stunt, it gives you a clear sense of their ethics. This is the man whom the media trusted to explain the Manti Te'o hoax. And it turned out that Te'o was actually a victim. So the question I want to raise now is: Did Timothy Burke have proof that Te'o was not complicit in the hoax? In other words, did he allow the story to be published even though he knew the implications about Te'o were wrong?

Maybe Burke really was being objective in his reporting, and maybe my suspicions are completely unfounded. But considering how much Deadspin has heckled Te'o these past four months, I think it's worth a second look.
________________________________________

I'll start with Deadspin's justification for using what Ned Zeman called the "money shot." During an interview with the National Sports Journalism Center, Deadspin's editor-in-chief Tommy Craggs was asked about the wisdom of including the "80%" quote--which by then had been attributed to a man named J.R. Vaosa. Craggs responded with typical disdain: "This is a concern troll's complaint. It's moronic. That's a quote from a source who knew both the hoax and hoaxer better than anyone we'd spoken with."

That really was an interesting rebuttal. J.R. Vaosa knew Ronaiah for a one-month period in 2008, when Vaosa's cousin was being catfished. According to Vaosa's twitter feed, he caught on to Ronaiah and cut off all ties with him. In other words, Tommy Craggs is saying the person who knew the "hoax and hoaxer" better than anyone else was also someone who apparently hadn't spoken to Ronaiah in over four years.

However, there was a woman who had spoken with Ronaiah much more recently and who'd heard Ronaiah's confession, and whom Deadspin relied on as a primary source: Diane O'Meara.

Diane is the woman whose photos were stolen by Ronaiah in order to impersonate Lennay Kekua. Diane was referred to as "Reba" in Deadspin's article, and they located her thanks to reverse-image searches. She and Ronaiah briefly attended the same high school together, where they didn't really interact, although they were friends on Facebook. In interviews conducted by ProPublica and ThePostGame.com, it's explained how Timothy Burke handled most of the key phone calls during Deadspin's investigation, including the calls made to Diane O'Meara.
__________________________________________

Timothy Burke first spoke with Diane on Monday, January 14th. Diane confirmed it was her in the photos of Lennay, and she was shocked to learn about the hoax. She also revealed that Ronaiah had sent her a Facebook message one month earlier. (This part was included in Deadspin's story.) Ronaiah had requested that she take a photo while holding up a sign saying "MSMK," in order to help cheer up a cousin who'd been hospitalized following a car accident. Diane had complied, even though she thought the request was strange.

Deadspin never tried to explain what Ronaiah's reason was for contacting Diane out of the blue. What we know now is that Ronaiah had tried "resurrecting" Lennay in early December to continue the relationship with Manti. And Manti, being skeptical, asked for a proof-of-life photo with Lennay's full initials and the date. That's why Ronaiah broke from the script and contacted Diane: He needed her to pose in that photo.


Image
The original "MSMK" photo, including the date.

(Of course, Deadspin couldn't have known all those behind-the-scenes details. They never spoke directly with Manti or with Ronaiah, nor with anyone who personally knew Manti. So I'll go back to what Deadspin would have known...)

After getting the news, Diane called up Ronaiah to confront him about the photos. Ronaiah acted strangely, told her not to worry, and he hung up. Diane then immediately called back Timothy Burke to describe how Ronaiah had responded. The Deadspin article reflects on that moment:

"Then, in a series of lengthy phone calls, Reba told us everything she knew about the classmate, a star high school quarterback turned religious musician named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo."

More succinctly: "Then, in a series of lengthy phone calls, [Diane] told us everything she knew about....Ronaiah Tuiasosopo."

The article then gives a biographical sketch of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, but there's no indication any of the background info comes from Diane. It's all of a general nature that could have been discovered by looking at news archives and social media websites. (According to the interview with ThePostGame, Jack Dickey handled most of that research.) So the reader never learns specifically what Diane said during those lengthy phone calls.
______________________________________

In the weeks to follow, Diane appeared on several TV shows--including Access Hollywood, Today, and Anderson Live--and gave interviews to the AP and the L.A. Times. In these interviews, she revealed lots of new details about the hoax, including the the fact Ronaiah had continued contacting her during the first week of January, and she described three requests which Ronaiah had made:

1.) A photo of Diane holding up a sign saying "MSMK" and "December 21st, 2012."
2.) A video of Diane saying, "Good luck on the 7th."
3.) A photo of Diane saying, "Good luck number 5."

The BCS championship game between Alabama and Notre Dame took place on January 7th, and Manti Te'o wore number 5 on his uniform. It's hard to picture any scenario in which those messages weren't intended specifically for Te'o. For any competent reporter, this should have raised huge red flags about whether Te'o was actually participating in the hoax. It's clear that, even into early January, Ronaiah was still trying to mess with Manti's head. And yet, Deadspin never mentioned these additional requests.
They didn't show the original, dated "MSMK" photo. And they haven't mentioned "Diane O'Meara" or "Reba" a single time since the original story ran, despite the fact she kept appearing on TV.

Furthermore, Ronaiah called Diane on the evening of Monday, January 14th, and during a 45-minute phone conversation he confessed his role in the hoax. Previously, Diane had called Deadspin immediately after talking to Ronaiah, so it would make sense that soon after hearing the confession, Diane would again call Deadspin and relay the information. Diane would've had a window of approximately 40 hours to share this info with Deadspin before the article was published.

When Ronaiah confessed to a church friend back in December, he made it very clear that Manti was innocent and that he played no role in the hoax. Did Ronaiah tell the same thing to Diane when he was confessing to her?

If so, then did Diane relay that information to Deadspin? Based on Diane's interviews, it's clear that she personally would have been skeptical of anything Ronaiah told her on the evening of the 14th. However, what would matter is simply whether she relayed what Ronaiah said back to Deadspin. It would then be Deadspin's obligation to repeat what their sources told them.
___________________________________________

Burke has insisted several times--when asked about Deadspin's responsibility to make sure their story was accurate--that he was simply repeating whatever his sources told him. But if Diane had strong circumstantial evidence as well as testimony which implied Te'o was an innocent victim, and if she told Burke everything she knew about Ronaiah, then why didn't that appear in Deadspin's reporting?

There is one caveat here that I'm well aware of: When Deadspin says Diane shared "everything she knew" about Ronaiah, it shouldn't be taken 100% literally. My assumption is that Diane shared the same story with Deadspin which she later shared with the AP and the L.A. Times. And the fact Ronaiah kept hounding her with requests during January was a pretty big part of that story. (Big enough so that the L.A. Times used it in their headline.)

Maybe that's where I'm mistaken. If prompted, Diane could simply say, "No, I really only spoke with Timothy Burke for about 30 minutes, and we didn't discuss that part." This could easily prove to be a waste of time. Nonetheless, I'm surprised that no one else has tried filling in the blanks in Deadspin's investigation.
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Re: Journalistic standards in reporting of the Te’o hoax: Q&

Postby admin » Wed Jul 22, 2015 6:37 am

Deadspin’s editor-in-chief explains editing, reporting behind Manti Te’o story
by Mallary Jean Tenore
Jan. 17, 2013

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Deadspin Editor-in-Chief Tommy Craggs says Timothy Burke and Jack Dickey were faced with a tough question when reporting their now famous Manti Te’o story: “What lengths do we go to to try and prove a negative?”

Image
Tommy Craggs

When asked about his reaction to The Boston Globe calling Deadspin “a website that has broken some high-profile stories but not an outlet regarded for journalistic standards,” Craggs says: “Whatever. Why should I care what a craven, slipshod outfit like the Boston Globe thinks of my ‘journalistic standards’?”

In an email Q&A, Craggs elaborates on Burke’s explanation of how Deadspin got the story that all other journalists missed.

Mallary Tenore: Who edited the story?

Tommy Craggs: Tom Scocca and I edited. We have a sort of wrestling-tag-team method of editing these longer features: We’ll put the story in a Google Doc and I’ll suplex a couple paragraphs and then Scocca will leap off the turnbuckle and piledrive a section or two, and so on.

What sort of editing went into the piece?

From the start, Tim Burke and Jack Dickey kept a running notes file in Google Docs that acted as a skeleton for both their reporting and for the story itself. They asked themselves the obvious questions, Socratically: Who is the person in the photos? Where was Lennay Kekua born? When was Lennay Kekua born? Where did Lennay Kekua live? Did Lennay Kekua attend Stanford? When was Lennay Kekua’s car accident? When did Lennay Kekua die? [Then they] set about answering them, through public records and media reports.

There was a fat pile of the latter, contradictions and all, and absolutely nothing of the former. From there, the story wrote itself. That’s all pretty obvious, and anyone who reports a story goes through at least a mental catechism like this. But putting it all on the page made the holes in the Lennay story plain to see.

How long did the reporting and editing process take?

The editing was easy — just a matter of making sure we’d asked ourselves the right questions and kicked over the right stones, and then making sure the story wouldn’t lose readers as it descended into the rabbit hole.

What sorts of questions did the editor ask to make sure that this was a thoroughly reported story?

We began reporting on Friday. By Monday, Burke had found and contacted the woman in the Lennay photos. Once we had her on the record, we knew we had enough for a story. By Tuesday, we had a draft.

The only question, really: What lengths do we go to to try and prove a negative? Do we call funeral homes in Carson (we did)? Do we call funeral homes *near* Carson (we didn’t)? Once we got an answer from Stanford on the question of Lennay’s enrollment, I was satisfied.

What’s your reaction to the reality that no other journalists thought to look into this story?

Well, I understand how this slipped through the cracks initially. If I’m a beat guy and I have 500 words to file after practice come hell or high water and the best player on the team has just told me a story about his dear, departed girlfriend, I’m not going to go spelunking through SSA death records to make sure he’s not full of shit. They won’t say that out loud in journalism classes or anything, but that’s just the nature of covering sports on a hard deadline.

I have less sympathy for the folks who crafted those painstaking “Love Story”-in-cleats feature stories about Manti and his dead girlfriend. Those were dumb, infantilizing stories to begin with, and they were executed poorly and sloppily, and if there’s any lesson to be drawn from this, it’s that this kind of simpering crap should be eliminated from the sports pages entirely.

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Re: Journalistic standards in reporting of the Te’o hoax: Q&

Postby admin » Wed Jul 22, 2015 5:18 pm

Manti Te'o
by Wikipedia
7/22/15

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Image

Manti Malietau Louis Teʻo (/ˈmæn.taɪ ˈtɛ.oʊ/, man-ty-te-oh;[2] born January 26, 1991)[3] is an American football linebacker for the San Diego Chargers of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at Notre Dame, where he was recognized as a consensus All-American, received eight national awards, and became one of the most decorated college football players of all time. He was drafted by the Chargers in the second round of the 2013 NFL Draft.

One of the enduring stories of Notre Dame's 2012 season was Te'o's strong play following the death of his grandmother and girlfriend (the latter was found to be a hoax), as well as his emergence as a Heisman Trophy candidate. In January 2013, the sports blog Deadspin revealed that the existence and death of his girlfriend had been faked. An acquaintance of Te'o claimed sole responsibility for orchestrating a hoax, assuming fault for luring Te'o into an online relationship with a nonexistent woman.

High school career

Te'o played for Punahou School, a private co-ed institution in Manoa, Honolulu, where he had also attended middle school. Te'o began his varsity career in 2006 with stellar play that won him selection to the second-team all-state roster as a sophomore.

As a junior in 2007, Te'o was named the state defensive player of the year by the Honolulu Advertiser and the Gatorade state player of the year. He received first-team all-state honors while totaling 90 tackles and five sacks on defense and 400 rushing yards and ten touchdowns as a running back.[4] Te'o drew considerable attention from colleges and recruiters in the process.

Te'o came into his senior year as one of the most celebrated players and recruits both on the state and national levels, landing on a number of national top ten recruiting lists before the start of the season. He received offers from over 30 college programs. During his senior year, Te'o helped lead Punahou to its first-ever state championship in football during the 2008 season. He amassed 129 tackles, including 11 sacks, forced three fumbles, tipped four passes and totaled 19 quarterback hurries. On offense at running back, Te'o rushed for 176 yards (5.3 yards per carry) and four touchdowns and had three receptions, two for touchdowns. He also had three interceptions, returning one 49 yards for a touchdown. He also returned a blocked punt for a touchdown.

He received his second straight Gatorade state player of the year award for his play during the season and was named first-team all-state and the state defensive player of the year for the second straight season. Te'o was such a force that The Honolulu Advertiser considered just naming him the overall state player of the year.[5] He is regarded as one of the most highly recruited athletes, both in football and for any sport, in the history of the state of Hawaii.

In 2008, Te'o won the inaugural Butkus Award at the high school level, awarded to the best prep linebacker in the United States.[6] He was also named the 2008 Sporting News High School Athlete of the Year, becoming the first person from the state of Hawaii and the first athlete of Polynesian descent to receive the award.[7] USA Today named Te'o the national Defensive Player of the Year and a first-team All-American. He is only the third high school player from Hawaii to be named to the USA Today All-American team, after Pat Kesi in 1990 and Jason Ching in 1995 (Ching, too, is a Punahou and Notre Dame alumnus).[8] Te'o was also named to the 2009 Parade All-American team as well.[9] On January 10, 2010, Te'o was named the Hawaii State Defensive Player of the Decade (2000–2009) by the Honolulu Advertiser.[10]

College recruitment and rankings

Te'o was consensually regarded as one of the elite prospects of the class of 2009. Major recruiting service Rivals.com listed him as a five-star recruit—the first from Hawaii since Jonathan Mapu in 2002—and ranked him second among inside linebackers only behind Vontaze Burfict.[11] Also listed as five-star recruit, Te'o was ranked as the No. 1 strongside linebacker in his class by Scout.com.

Name Home town High school / college Height Weight 40‡ Commit date
Manti Te'o
LB Honolulu, HI Punahou 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) 225 lb (102 kg) 4.6 Feb 4, 2009
Scout:5/5 stars Rivals:5/5 stars 247Sports: N/A ESPN grade: 93


On National Signing Day of 2009, Te'o committed to the University of Notre Dame.[12] He chose the Fighting Irish, then coached by Charlie Weis, over Brigham Young and Southern California. Te'o was the first USA Today Defensive Player of the Year to commit to the Irish since Kory Minor in 1995.

College career

Te'o enrolled in the University of Notre Dame, where he played for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team from 2009 to 2012.

Freshman season

Te'o entered his first college game at the start of the second defensive series early in the second quarter versus Nevada on September 5, 2009. On his third snap Te'o tackled Wolf Pack quarterback Colin Kaepernick after an 11-yard gain on third and 15 for his first collegiate tackle. After playing, but not starting, his first three games, Te'o made his first collegiate start in the Irish's game versus Purdue.[13] He played in all 12 games of his freshman season and finished the season with 63 tackles, the third-most tackles ever by a Notre Dame freshman behind Bob Golic (82 in 1975) and Ross Browner (68 in 1973).[14] Te'o also recorded 5.5 tackles for loss and 1 sack.

On December 8, 2009, Te'o was named a Freshman All-American by College Football News.[15] He was also named a second-team Freshman All-American by Rivals.com.[16]

Sophomore season

Te'o moved from outside to inside linebacker in 2010 as Notre Dame switched to a 3-4 defensive scheme under defensive coordinator Bob Diaco.[17] On April 30, 2010, Te'o was named to the 2010 Lombardi Award & Nagurski Award watch lists.[14][18]

Te'o led the Fighting Irish in tackles with 133, and was second in tackles for loss with 9.5. Against Stanford on September 25, Te'o finished with 21 total tackles. This total represents a career-high for Te'o and is also the most tackles in a game by an individual for Notre Dame since 2006.[19]

Te'o was named one of 16 semifinalists for both the Butkus Award (Best Collegiate Linebacker) and the Bednarik Award for top College defensive player.[20] He was also named a Second Team All-American by CNNSI.[21]

Junior season

Te'o led the Fighting Irish in tackles for the second straight season in 2011 with 128. He also led the team in tackles for loss with 13.5 and finished second in sacks with 5.0.

Te'o was a finalist for the Butkus Award and the Lott Trophy and was selected as the 2011 FBS Independent Defensive Player of the Year.[22]

Te'o was named a second team All-American by the Associated Press, Walter Camp Football Foundation, Rivals.com, Phil Steele and CNNSI. He was also named to the Capital One Academic All-American second team.[22]

Senior season

Te’o announced on December 11, 2011 that he would return to Notre Dame for his senior season. Te'o entered his final season as one of 10 players in Notre Dame history to record over 300 career tackles and started the season eighth on the career tackles list for the Fighting Irish.[22] During the season, Te’o was the leading tackler and leader in interceptions for a 12-0 Notre Dame team which had the second-ranked scoring defense (10.33 points per game) in the country. He had 103 tackles in the regular season (52 solo, 51 assisted, 8.58 per game), including 5.5 tackles for loss and 1.5 sacks (one for 13 yards of Oklahoma quarterback Landry Jones.[13] Te’o also led the team, as well as all FBS linebackers in the nation, in interceptions. Te’o’s 7 interceptions during the 2012 season are the most by any FBS linebacker since 2001.[23] He ranked third in the nation at 0.58 interceptions per game, and overall only Fresno State safety Phillip Thomas has more, with 8 interceptions this season.[13] Te'o's season-high per game was 2 interceptions for 28 yards against Michigan.[24]

Image
Manti Te'o during the pregame coin toss vs. Navy on Sept. 1, 2012

In the 2012 season, Notre Dame ranked second in the nation in scoring defense (10.33 points per game) and ranked in the top 19 nationally in four other defensive categories: fifth in rushing defense (92.42 yards per game), sixth in total defense (287.25 yards per game), 12th in pass efficiency defense (105.58) and 19th in sacks (2.75 per game). Te'o's 8.58 tackles per game is three and a half more per game than the squad's next-most prolific tackler, Zeke Motta (5.09 per game).[13]

Te'o is one of the most decorated defensive players in college football history. He won the 2012 Defensive IMPACT Player of the Year Lott Trophy, as well as the Maxwell Award, the Chuck Bednarik Award, the Bronko Nagurski Trophy, the Butkus Award, the Lombardi Award, and the Walter Camp Award. In addition, he was named a national scholar-athlete by the National Football Foundation.[25] One of three finalists for the Heisman Trophy, Te'o eventually finished second in the voting to Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel.

In the BCS National Championship Game, Te'o recorded 10 tackles in a 42-14 loss to a 12-1 Alabama team which won its third national championship in four years. Alabama took control from the start and led 14-0 after the first quarter and extended its lead to a 28-0 score by halftime. Te'o finished with 7 assists and 3 solo tackles.[26]

College career statistics

Te'o has 437 total tackles in his four-year career at Notre Dame. He ranks third all-time in school history behind Bob Crable (521, 1978–81) and Bob Golic (479, 1975–78). He has started the past 47 games, beginning with the fourth game of his freshman season, at Purdue. This is the longest streak of any linebacker in the country.[13] He joins Crable as the second player in Notre Dame history to record 100+ tackles in three consecutive seasons.[27]

All statistics from Notre Dame Official Athletic Site,[28][29][30][31]

Year Team Games Tackles Sacks Pass Defense Fumbles Blkd
Solo Ast Total TFL – Yds No – Yds Int – Yds BU PD Qbh Rcv – Yds FF Kick Saf
2009 Notre Dame 12 29 34 63 5.5 – 25 1.0 – 12 0 – 0 1 1 1 0 – 0 0 0 0
2010 Notre Dame 13 66 67 133 9.5 – 34 1.0 – 7 0 – 0 3 3 3 0 – 0 1 0 0
2011 Notre Dame 13 62 66 128 13.5 – 36 5.0 – 23 0 – 0 2 2 4 0 – 0 1 0 0
2012 Notre Dame 13 55 58 113 5.5 – 19 1.5 – 13 7 – 35 4 11 4 2 – 8 0 0 0
Career 51 212 225 437 34.0 – 114 8.5 – 55 7 – 35 10 17 12 2 – 8 2 0 0


Professional career

2013 NFL Draft


Forgoing the chance of a professional career in 2012, Te'o decided to return to Notre Dame after the 2011 season,[32] despite being projected a late first-round pick for the 2012 NFL Draft as early as mid-season of 2011.[33] In preseason mock drafts from May 2012, Te'o was listed as a late first-rounder for the 2013 NFL Draft as well.[34][35] By mid-season, he had moved up to the mid-first round.[36] Notre Dame has not seen one of their linebackers selected in the first round since Bob Crable in 1982.

At the conclusion of the 2012 college football season, Te'o signed with agent Tom Condon. He was training at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, in preparation for the NFL Draft.[37]

Pre-draft measurables

Ht Wt Arm length Hand size 40-yd dash 10-yd split 20-yd split 20-ss 3-cone Vert Broad BP
6 ft 1¼ in 241 lb 32½ in 9½ in 4.82 s 1.64 s 2.69 s 4.27 s 7.13 s 33 in 9 ft 5 in 21 reps
All values from NFL combine, except bench press (from Notre Dame Pro Day)[38][39]


Te'o attended the NFL Combine under a lot of scrutiny by NFL teams.[40] He disappointed with a comparably slow 40-yard dash, but promised to "do a lot better" at his Notre Dame pro day.[41] After the combine, Sports Illustrated projected Te'o to fall out of the first round.[42] In March 2013, Pat Kirwan of CBSSports.com, too, projected Te'o would not be selected in the first round.[43] At Notre Dame Pro Day on March 26, Te'o ran faster according to ESPN's Todd McShay (hand-timed 4.75 and 4.71).[44] Subsequently, he was re-listed in first round mock drafts, projected No. 28 overall by ESPN's Todd McShay,[45] and No. 25 overall by Don Banks of Sports Illustrated.[46] Only days before the draft, consensus among draft pundits emerged of Te'o being selected by the Chicago Bears at 20 or the Minnesota Vikings at 23 (or 25).[47] However, Te'o was not selected by any team in the first round, partly because of his off-field issues.[48]

He was selected in the second round, 38th overall by the San Diego Chargers,[49] as the second inside linebacker in the draft behind Alec Ogletree. "It's a perfect scenario. My parents can come and watch, I can go home, it's San Diego," said Te'o on draft day.[48] He is the highest selected Notre Dame linebacker since Demetrius DuBose in 1993.

San Diego Chargers

Image
Te'o on the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76).

On May 10, 2013, Te'o signed a four-year contract with the Chargers.[50] The deal includes a $2,141,768 dollar signing bonus and will be worth just over $5 million with over $3.1 million in guaranteed money.[51] He is the second linebacker of Polynesian descent to play for the Chargers after Junior Seau.

Te'o injured his right foot in the Chargers' preseason opener against the Seattle Seahawks on August 8, which caused him to miss the remainder of preseason as well as the regular season opener against the Houston Texans.[52] Te'o made his NFL debut in a week 4 matchup against the Dallas Cowboys. Te'o finished the game with three tackles as the Chargers won.
Te'o ended the season with 61 tackles and 4 passes defended in 13 games started.

Personal

Te'o was born in Laie, Hawaii, on January 26, 1991, of Samoan ancestry.[53] He is the son of Brian and Ottilia Te'o and has five siblings: sisters BrieAnne, Tiare, Eden and Maya and brother Manasseh.[54]

In high school, Te'o had a 3.5 grade-point average and did volunteer work with the Shriners Hospital, Head Start preschool program, Hawai'i Food Bank and Special Olympics. Te'o also became an Eagle Scout in November 2008.[55] Te'o is an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).[56]

Girlfriend hoax

Te'o told many media outlets that both his grandmother and his girlfriend had died on September 11, 2012.[57] Te'o said that his girlfriend, Stanford University student Lennay Kekua, had died after a car accident and subsequently battling leukemia.[58] Te'o did not miss any football games for Notre Dame, saying that he had promised Kekua that he would play even if something had happened to her.[59] Many sports media outlets reported on these tragedies during Te'o's strong 2012 season and emergence as a Heisman Trophy candidate.[60]

After receiving an anonymous email tip in January 2013, reporters Timothy Burke and Jack Dickey of the sports blog Deadspin conducted an investigation into Kekua's identity. On January 16, they published an article alleging that Kekua did not exist and pointed to a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo as involved in the hoax of a relationship with Te'o.[60][61] Tuiasosopo has been described as a family friend or acquaintance of Te'o.[60][62] Pictures of Kekua that had been published in the media were actually of Diane O'Meara, a former high school classmate of Tuiasosopo.[63]

On the same day the Deadspin article was published, Notre Dame issued a statement that "Manti had been the victim of what appears to be a hoax in which someone using the fictitious name Lennay Kekua apparently ingratiated herself with Manti and then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had tragically died of leukemia."[64][65][66] In a press conference, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick confirmed the university had hired private investigators to uncover the source of the hoax, and he clarified that Te'o's relationship with Kekua was "exclusively an online relationship".[67] This conflicted with previous accounts from Te'o and his family that the couple had first met after a football game and that she visited him in Hawaii.[68][69][70] Swarbrick said that Te'o informed Notre Dame of the hoax on December 26 after receiving a phone call on December 6 from the woman he knew as Kekua, claiming she was still alive. Te'o mentioned Kekua's death in at least four separate interviews in the days following the phone call.[70][71][72][73]

In response to the growing suspicions that he was involved in the hoax, Te'o agreed to a January 18 interview with sports journalist Jeremy Schaap in which he maintained his innocence. Te'o explained that he had lied to his father and others about meeting her in person because he thought he would be seen as "crazy" for having a serious relationship with a woman he had never met.[74] Te'o said he was angered and confused by the December 6 phone call and had continued to speak of Kekua because the situation was unclear to him.[74] He explained that Tuiasosopo represented himself as the cousin of Lennay Kekua and that the two men had communicated online over the last several years and met once in person at the 2012 Notre Dame/USC game. Te'o said that Tuiasosopo confessed to him on January 16 that he was behind the hoax.[74]

In a January 24 interview on Katie with Katie Couric, Te'o played three voicemails left by Kekua and said the voice "sounds like a girl", an assessment with which many agreed.[75][76][77] In an appearance on Dr. Phil on January 31 and February 1, Tuiasosopo confessed to the hoax; he admitted to falling in love with Te'o and using the Kekua identity as an escape. He also recreated the female voice behind a privacy screen.[78] Relatives of Tuiasosopo, however, told the New York Post that Kekua's voice belonged to Tuiasosopo's female cousin.[79] Despite the revelation that Kekua did not exist, NFL player Reagan Maui'a said that he twice met someone claiming to be Kekua, and that they had been introduced by Tuiasosopo, whom he believed to be Kekua's cousin.[80]

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Re: Journalistic standards in reporting of the Te’o hoax: Q&

Postby admin » Fri Jul 24, 2015 12:06 am

Deadspin Rides Manti Te’o Hoax Story to Renown—and Keeps Heat on ESPN
by David Freedlander
2/5/13

Image

The Manti Te’o girlfriend hoax put the website, once derided as a repository for juvenile jokes, on the map. Editor Tommy Craggs tells David Freedlander the site’s philosophy is not to take sports too seriously—and to keep the pressure on its “death star,” ESPN.

When Jack Dickey, a college senior at Columbia and a writer at the website Deadspin, told editor Tommy Craggs he’d heard a tip that star Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o did not in fact have a girlfriend whose death inspired the Fighting Irish’s undefeated season, Craggs wrote back in an instant message, “This would be the most amazing story. This would be fucking amazing.”

“Oh man,” he added in a transcript shared with The Daily Beast. “I have such a hard-on. I want this story. I want it I want it I want it.”

When the story broke a few days later, causing one of the biggest and most bizarre scandals in American sports—and a bit of soul-searching on the part of sports reporters who had bought into the story of a young woman who was twice near death from leukemia and the effects of a car accident only to insist that her boyfriend not attend her funeral, but play on in her honor—it was perhaps the first time people outside of sports-world obsessives had heard of, let alone read, Deadspin.

But to anyone paying attention, the 3,500-word story was further proof that a website, once derided as little more than a repository for juvenile jokes and throwing spitballs at the mainstream press, had become a permanent presence in the sports mediasphere. And that the line between major news outlet and supposedly inconsequential blogsite had dropped considerably, if it hasn’t disappeared altogether.

This may surprise, especially for a site that, as of this writing, boasts on its front page a round-up of the best GIFs from the Super Bowl the night before, a video of a shirtless Baltimore Raven jumping off a building and into a tree, and a tally of “boobs and nut shots” from the slew of Super Bowl commercials that aired Sunday night.

“The reason Deadspin exists is because there is a gap between how sports gets talked about in the official media and how fans consume and talk about it and think about. Deadspin exists in that gap,” Craggs said in an interview late last week in his SoHo office.

Deadspin is an off-shoot of Gawker Media, the pioneering gossip site. On the walls of their elegant, hardwood-floored newsrooms sit framed photos of some of the masters of the craft: Joan Didion, George Orwell, Matt Drudge.

Craggs was recruited to the site by A.J. Daulerio, a hard-charging reporter credited with turning the site from the one-man snarky musings of its founder, Will Leitch (now with New York magazine), into what GQ called “the raunchiest, funniest, and most controversial sports site on the Web” for publishing photos of Brett Favre’s penis that the former New York Jets quarterback had sent to a sideline reporter, or publishing photos of self-described recovering alcoholic Texas slugger Josh Hamilton partying it up with some young co-eds at a bar.

Craggs came up through what he called “all the shit-eating young journalism stuff”—an internship at an alt-weekly and at Harper’s Magazine, fact-checking for ESPN the Magazine, freelance writing for various publications about sports.

The ESPN magazine stint is ironic, since a good bit of Deadspin’s focus these days is taking on what Craggs called “the death star.” If Deadspin has one singular white whale, it is the guys in Bristol, Conn.

“What makes us different from ESPN is that we don’t think our readers are utter morons,” said Craggs. “What makes us different from other sports sites is that we have a very obvious death star, and we are very obviously oriented around it.”

To understand the site’s all-out focus on ESPN, it is necessary to understand the role that ESPN plays in the world of sports journalism. There is, quite simply, nothing else like it in the world of media. The network generates huge profits for teams and leagues by buying up broadcast rights, but also thinks of itself as a journalistic institution that objectively covers the people responsible for its continued existence.

Under Daulerio, the site declared all-out war on ESPN. He had received a tip that baseball analyst Steve Phillips was having an extramarital affair with an assistant and was soon to be let go by the network. A spokesman for the network denied it, and a few weeks later the whole story ended up in the New York Post. (The network disputes this account.) Daulerio decided to empty his inbox of all the salacious rumors he had been hearing from employees in Bristol, and even off-air, back-office executives were fair game for Deadspin’s “ESPNHORNDOGGERY” segments.

“What makes us different from ESPN is that we don’t think our readers are utter morons.”
“As a stunt, it was brilliant. As a work of journalism, it was problematic. It probably wasn’t the best thing we have ever done,” Craggs says of the battle. And now, he says, the site has “narrowed our focus” on ESPN.

“There have been a handful of stories about people there banging their hairdresser or whatever, but I think the best stuff [we do] on ESPN is about how their news operation is getting ground up by the entertainment side of things. A lot of the scandals there are basically from ESPN just tripping over its own dick.”

In March, the site hired John Koblin, a well-respected media reporter at WWD and The New York Observer, to cover ESPN almost exclusively. He has since written stories skewering the network for its overhyped coverage of a New York Jets backup quarterback/cultural icon, unearthed that a reporter for the website was cribbing off Wikipedia, and revealed that a columnist for the website had a side job as a scam artist.

[Full disclosure—Koblin and I briefly overlapped at The Observer.]

To hear Deadspin tell it, the problem with ESPN is not just that the network has colonized the sports landscape, but that it has changed the way people actually talk about sports. The locker-room lingo the men in the garish suits spout on Sportscenter and elsewhere is taken as native to the subject, when, in fact, unironically using phrases like “deuce,” “diaper dandy” and “aloha means goodbye,” is well, sort of ridiculous.

Deadspin exists as a counterweight to all of that, the sport news site for the urban sophisticate who doesn’t think the whole enterprise should be taken that seriously. So much of what not just ESPN, but the whole sports-media complex, does is what industry reporters call “God-ing up”—that is, turning the players and coaches into larger-than-life legends, their stories the stuff of myth and redemption. Deadspin punctures a hole in all of that.

“I would watch ESPN and it didn’t appeal to me, and I didn’t understand to whom it would appeal,” said Dickey, the college-age reporter on the Te’o story. He had been, he said, reading Deadspin since he was 15; working there now is the pinnacle of a lifelong dream. “It’s really weird the way [ESPN] talks about sports. Nobody talks about sports that way.”

In response to this story, Josh Krulewitz, a spokesman for ESPN, told The Daily Beast, “We are aggressive about researching what sports fans enjoy and we work hard to fulfill our mission to serve them. To that end, while some media commentary from various outlets may be over the top at times, if and when the criticism is thoughtful and constructive, we look to learn from it.”

A decent bit of Deadspin’s content is fairly thinly sourced—an anonymous partygoer recounting what some famous sports star said at a party he or she attended and the like—but it is that kind of stuff that Craggs says brings people to the site, and it’s the more thoughtful, “prestige stories” that get them to stay.

“They are the watchmen,” said Dave Zirin, author of Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down. “I know they do it all very tongue-in-cheek and that so much of their website is devoted to humor, and the lighter side of sports, but all of that is the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down. If Deadspin didn’t exist, someone would have to invent them.”

All of which brings us back to Te’o. The story was, in many ways, the perfect Deadspin story. After it broke, ESPN told The New York Times that it too was working on a Te’o story, but hadn’t yet nailed down the particulars—the unspoken assumption being that, unlike some people, the network doesn’t run stories until nailing down all the facts. But according to Michael Butterworth, a professor of media at Bowling Green, ESPN has an incentive to slow-walk those kinds of stories since so much of the network is based on treating figures like Te’o as larger than life, their personal struggles too good to check.

And the fact that Te’o, wittingly or not, found the narrative that made him an irresistible target for sport journalists hungry for a story, makes him kind of the shining example of all that Craggs and his merry band of bloggers have set out to prove.

“There is a part of me that kind of loves Manti for this,” Craggs says. “Whether it was on a conscious or unconscious level, he found a loophole in sports media and nudged his story through it.”

“To my eye,” Craggs adds, “he is the best press critic in America.”
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