Jason Whitlock on the Media Circus; Wojnarowski Blasts Stern
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More proof truth isn’t media’s motivator DA William J. Fitzpatrick addresses the media during a news conference Wednesday.
by Jason Whitlock
Jason Whitlock writes about the sports world from every angle, including those other writers can’t imagine or muster courage to address. His columns are humorous, thought-provoking, agenda-free, honest and unpredictable. E-mail him or follow his Twitter or become a fan of Jason Whitlock on Facebook
The statute of limitations ran out long ago on the molestation allegations made by accuser Bobby Davis and his stepbrother Michael Lang and therefore there will be no state charges against Fine, the former Syracuse assistant basketball coach.
According to Davis, the Syracuse police informed him of this fact in 2002. The impossibility of state charges was hammered home again two weeks ago when federal authorities took over the Fine investigation.
So why the news conference?
Because from the outset, the Bernie Fine investigation has never been a search for the truth. It has been an ESPN-generated, reality-TV sequel to the real-life Jerry Sandusky-Penn State tragedy.
That is not to be interpreted as a statement about Fine’s guilt or innocence. I don’t have a credible, informed opinion about what may or may not have happened between Fine and Davis when Davis was a child. The much-celebrated, Laurie Fine-Bobby Davis secretly recorded audio tape leads me to believe there is reason to suspect Bernie Fine of wrongdoing, but it does not cause me to believe.
A preponderance of evidence causes me to believe in someone’s guilt. There has been little of that offered in the Bernie Fine Media Circus. And even if it is offered, the media can choose to ignore it and focus on whatever narrative furthers our agenda.
When Fitzpatrick wasn’t grandstanding Wednesday, he shared that he turned over actual evidence to Fine’s attorneys that apparently reveals Fine’s third accuser, Zach Tomaselli, fabricated his story about being molested by Fine inside a Pittsburgh hotel room.
That admission is major news. Yet somehow it is being treated as minor news in comparison to the “revelation” that Fitzpatrick won’t be pressing state charges against Fine, and Fitzpatrick’s opinion that Davis and Lang are credible accusers.
My opinion of and interest in the Fine case revolve around fairness. Despite the grotesqueness of the allegations against Fine and the child-abuse awareness raised by the Sandusky case, it’s highly important that Fine be treated fairly by the police, government investigators and the media.
It’s not happening. Fine’s constitutionally protected rights are being trampled upon, and the media (ESPN and the Syracuse Post-Standard) are leading a public lynching of Fine’s reputation before there’s ever been anything remotely resembling a fair airing of the facts.
On Wednesday, with dozens of TV cameras rolling and ESPN broadcasting his words live, Fitzpatrick in one breath said, “it’s not my place to pronounce Bernie Fine guilty of anything,” and then in another breath said, “hasn’t Bernie Fine caused enough pain in this community?”
Bernie Fine is innocent until the moment Fitzpatrick says Fine is guilty.
The Bernie Fine Media Circus is a really bad TV show. But it’s a show that airs on a 24-hour loop in poor inner-city and rural communities or wherever power is wielded without the Fourth Estate offering consistent objection.
I care about the Bernie Fine case because I know poor people — regardless of color — constantly get railroaded in our criminal justice system and by the media. Fine is lucky he has the financial resources to hire competent attorneys and private investigators to defend him. But despite his resources, he’s still getting unfairly killed in the court of public opinion by the media and government officials.
His third accuser being destroyed by evidence unearthed by the prosecutor is somehow secondary to stale news about the prosecutor admitting New York’s statute of limitations ran out. Really?
Tomaselli’s alleged fraudulence damages the entire case against Bernie Fine. Tomaselli (who spoke with me on my “Real Talk” podcast on Dec. 2) has repeatedly claimed that he and Bobby Davis chatted multiple times before Tomaselli contacted police and told them what Fitzpatrick claims to be a bogus story. ESPN reporter Mark Schwarz has admitted that he put Tomaselli and Davis together, which is a clear violation of journalistic ethics.
Two weeks ago, the Post-Standard ran Tomaselli’s accusations against Fine, and ESPN editor Vince Doria said Tomaselli’s story was the reason ESPN aired the Laurie Fine-Davis audio tape. Did the Post-Standard make any attempt at vetting Tomaselli’s story before running it or in the two weeks since it ran? Did ESPN try to vet Tomaselli’s story?
Is there a search for the truth by the media organizations with the deepest investments in the Bernie Fine Media Circus? I don’t think so.
It has been reported by the Post-Standard and ESPN that Tomaselli’s accusations were used by the Feds to obtain search warrants into Fine’s home and office. If that’s true, whatever evidence the Feds collected from those searches might be ruled inadmissible by a judge. Tomaselli is a poisoned tree. He can’t bear fruit. He also poisons Davis. What did Davis share with Tomaselli that made investigators initially believe Tomaselli’s story?
I know it’s politically incorrect to question molestation accusers, but Davis is 39 and Lang is 45 and there are holes in their story. Lang initially denied being abused by Fine. Lang’s timeline about when he was abused by Fine is inconsistent and problematic. During a television interview, Lang indicated Laurie Fine was in the home when Bernie touched him inappropriately when Lang was in fifth or sixth grade. Bernie and Laurie started dating around 1980-81 and were married in 1985. Lang was in fifth or sixth grade in the 1970s. Davis admitted his own sexual relationship with Laurie Fine. Davis said he was molested by Bernie Fine from childhood until age 27. Davis admits a shady financial history with Bernie Fine.
After first game following Fine’s firing, Jim Boeheim clarifies exactly what he has control over at Syracuse.
Fitzpatrick swears Davis and Lang are credible accusers about things that happened 25 or 30 years ago. All because of a somewhat vague telephone conversation a wife had with her former teenage lover who was also, according to Davis, involved in a sexual relationship with her husband.
Fitzpatrick’s confidence in Davis and Lang must be based on things he can’t share with us. Or, he was simply grandstanding, milking the cameras for the last time before the curtains fall on the Bernie Fine Media Circus.
Years ago, I watched damn near every drop of the O.J. Simpson double-murder trial. Shortly after the opening arguments, I concluded there was no way prosecutors Marcia Clark and Chris Darden were in the same league as Johnnie Cochran. A couple of weeks into the trial, I realized Simpson was going to be found not guilty.
I kept following the trial and the O.J. TV shows it spawned. The media, particularly Geraldo Rivera, lied to the public. We never informed the public of the one-sidedness of the court proceedings and the incompetence of Clark and Darden. It was better business to maintain the illusion that the case was close and that O.J. might be convicted. If we (media) had told you the truth, you might’ve flipped the channel and watched something else or quit reading our accounts.
When it was over and O.J. walked, we misinformed again, blaming the verdict on a stupid, racist jury. Clark and Darden were media sources. We didn’t dare tell the truth about their mishandling of the trial and risk losing them as television and radio guests.
Nothing has changed. We still love the circus.
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Stern’s power trip takes NBA for wild ride
By Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports
Here was New Orleans Hornets general manager Dell Demps out on the West Bank of New Orleans, out in a practice facility that Chris Paul has had to march past reptile and bird shows, and government cheese handouts on his way to the locker room. For thousands of hours, Demps had done the job he had prepared his entire professional life: video and statistical analysis, telephone calls, texts, emails and meetings until 3:30 a.m. with his basketball staff.
The job. Demps did the job. His professional career, his reputation, the future of the franchise, hung in the balance of the team’s trade of Paul. Demps never had a chance to keep Paul, nor did his capable predecessor, Jeff Bower. The NBA had come to New Orleans because a Bible-thumping owner, George Shinn, had been sued by a Charlotte woman in a sexual assault case. All alone, Shinn destroyed an excellent NBA market in Charlotte and moved the Hornets to New Orleans to find a new city that would treat him like a savior. Katrina was on deck, and the NBA had to live with the consequences.
In so many ways, Demps was working to clean up one more of commissioner David Stern’s messes on Thursday. Demps did his job, did it beautifully and out of nowhere, out of the hubris of Olympic Tower in Manhattan, Stern sent word that this three-team deal for one of the sport’s biggest stars had been obliterated after the Hornets, Lakers and Rockets agreed upon a package.
Now, Stern has apparently ceded to public backlash, as the three teams re-engaged in talks on amending Thursday’s deal in a way Stern could accept, league sources told Yahoo! Sports on Friday. Now, the job of these three teams is to shake up the deal just enough for Stern to be able to save face and approve it. The basketball experts at the league office are mandating the Hornets gather younger players and draft picks for Paul. Somehow, they believe that solidifies New Orleans’ basketball future in a better way.
Ideally, it would, if Stern and his wing-tipped tag-a-longs in Olympic tower were qualified to make those judgments. The Hornets could’ve flipped Lamar Odom and Luis Scola to contenders to secure those kinds of assets, but apparently Stern wants the illusion of a younger player or a pick that he has no idea will ever turn into anything.
On Thursday, there was a long, sordid chain of events that ended with a determined young GM, Demps, overcome with anger and disbelief, feeling like the walls had come down on him Thursday. In the end, Demps was told to wait for Stern to call, but there was no hope he could dissuade Stern and spare everyone this stunning, unprecedented misuse of power. The NBA hadn’t taken over ownership of the Hornets to carry out Stern’s petty grudges and power trips, but that’s what it always comes back to with him.
The curtain has been pulled back on how this league operates, how Stern still sees himself as emperor, as a dictator of what he wants and how he wants it. Back on All-Star weekend in Los Angeles, Stern told those stars in an angry, true moment in the locker room that he knew where the bodies were buried because he had buried a lot of them. He threw that shovel over his shoulder again Thursday and walked away from one more dirt ditch.
After five months of a lockout, after failing to deliver a promise to his owners that he would reform NBA rules to make these superstar hostage crises disappear, another was underway in New Orleans on Stern’s watch. Stern doesn’t see superstars with the gravitas of Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson, and feels like so many of these owners that he privately despises: Who the hell are these players to dictate terms to him?
This had little to do with the merits of the Paul trade and how it would impact the value for the Hornets’ next owner – and everything to do with timing. Some owners were angry with Stern pushing so hard for a Christmas Day return that he relented on several of the rules they wanted to spare themselves from the superstar takeovers. Business started again, and business was unchanged. Long before Dan Gilbert sent that email, his ownership peers were raging to Stern.
For some reason, the end of the labor battle hadn’t marked the end of the fight for Stern and the owners against the star players. That’s what happened here. Stern deemed the trade unacceptable for “basketball reasons,” and that’s laughable considering how little that league office knows about basketball, appreciates it, or was even willing to give it a chance to be credible this season with so many games jammed into so few days, with such little preseason.
When the word came to Demps, he sat in his office and let the emotion wash over him. Stern has reduced so many men to rubble as commissioner, forever famous for belittling employees with his temper tantrums. This time, it was different. Stern had to explain the unexplainable, and there’s no discussion with the commissioner. There’s no reasoning. Everyone’s a subject in his kingdom.
Demps was feeling humiliated, embarrassed and a little betrayed, say his friends. He had done his job and had his staff reporting to NBA vice president Stu Jackson’s office on the progress of the trade talks.
As a GM, all a franchise can do is make a plan, take a course of action and see how it all turns out. For the NBA to run the Hornets the way Stern promised they would be run – “If [management] recommends it, then we’re going to be approving it,” Stern had said – then you let them trade Paul when they believe they have the best possible deal, when they can get the full value to a team he’s committed to sign with long-term. Now, the Hornets are left with a defiant Paul, who, if he isn’t traded to L.A., will probably seek free agency out of spite to Stern. This will cause him to be a rental to most places where he could be traded, and that’s not how you get the best value for him.
Rockets executives told friends in the league, “They set us back three years with this.” The Rockets had gathered young players, assets to make a move for a star like Pau Gasol, and pair him with a pricy free agent like Nene in the middle. All that could be gone now, lost in the debris, and all the NBA had to do was tell Demps early on the league wouldn’t approve such a deal. They owed him the grace to spare everyone the precious time, resources and professional anguish of this mess.
This wasn’t about the best interests of the Hornets, the NBA, anyone at all. This wasn’t the NBA that Stern promised those owners in a post-lockout league, and they let him have it Thursday. After all those long days and nights negotiating the end of that labor war, it turns out it isn’t over and never will be in this NBA. This is the fight to David Stern’s ignoble finish as commissioner of the NBA, the fight that’ll never end well for the NBA. That’s how Stern’s going down, and that’s how he’ll be remembered.
