Yet more proof that Murray Chass just pulls this crap out of his ass

December 12th, 2006 → 3:01 pm @ // No Comments

Remember last week, when the Times‘s Murray Chass wrote an anonymously sourced article that claimed Dodgers officials were considering filing tampering charges against the Red Sox because of the J.D. Drew signing? (I sure do.) Here was Chass’s proof: an “executive of one club” said the “Dodgers’ owner, Frank McCourt, was certain tampering had occured.”

Now, Chass got a truly shocking number of things wrong in the piece, including whether or not Theo and Dodgers GM Ned Colletti were talking (they were). Now it seems as if the entire premise of the piece was, in fact, made up out of whole cloth.

No joke. Check out this story in today’s Los Angeles Times:

“The Dodgers hadn’t seriously considered asking Major League Baseball to investigate until a column last week in the New York Times suggested tampering had occurred, leading General Manager Ned Colletti to say Friday, ‘We’ve looked into’ filing charges.'” (Emphasis added to stress just how insane this whole thing is.)

To review: Murray Chass writes one in a series of his bizarre, vitriolic rants directed at the Red Sox in which he quotes anonymous “executives” as saying the Dodgers are considering filing tampering charges…while, in reality, the Dodgers weren’t considering any such thing until Chass wrote his column!

We direct Chass to the relevant sections of the Times‘s guideline on ethics:

p. 9, paragraph 23: “[I]t is essential that we preserve a professional detachment, free of any whiff of bias.”

As well as the paper’s policy on anonymous sourcing:

“In any situation when we cite anonymous sources, at least some readers may suspect that the newspaper is being used to convey tainted information or special pleading. … Confidential sources must have direct knowledge of the information they are giving us — or they must be the authorized representatives of an authority, known to us, who has such knowledge.”

Not only did the source not have direct knowledge of the information, the article actually created the exact situation it purported to report — that there was “talk of misconduct” swirling around the Sox.

It’s kind of impressive, if you think about it.


Post Categories: Media ethics & Murray Chass & New York Times

One Comment → “Yet more proof that Murray Chass just pulls this crap out of his ass”

  1. […] Scott Boras. Murray’s had a hard-on for this issue for more than a month, and the fact that multiple outlets (like The Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times, the hometown papers of the two teams most […]

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