RANT: Who Needs Rumors and Hacks?

Let me tell you what frustrates me. Unfounded Rumors and Hacks.

When I was a kid, sports news was just that. News. With the advent of the Internet, everybody is a professional and they know what they are talking about...or so they think they do.

Hacks are in interesting breed.  They will latch on to any information, no matter if it is confirmed, or not, just to write the story or to be among the first to report it.  "The Scoop" if you will.

Not only that, but they will propagate information that has not yet been confirmed and viola!  Instant rumor mill.

Now we get to the worst form of a hack.  The ones that blurb a few sentences and have nothing to back it up.  There are many entries all over the web, and I would love to point them all out but I will use a couple of examples.

Let this be clear that I am not purposely targeting anyone, but I need to illustrate some examples to further my point.

I was just reading an "article" in The Fourth Period and found this:

Marc Savard's tenure with the Bruins is seemingly coming to an end, as the team continues to shop him to other organizations.

Despite his expected exit, Savard's teammates continue to back him and would like to see him stay.

"I don't know what's going to happen. He's with us right now, and that's how it is," Bruins center David Krejci told the Boston Globe. "You want to see the best players, the good players, the good guys, you want them to be back."

Various reports have linked Savard to several teams, including the Toronto Maple Leafs, Los Angeles Kings, and Edmonton Oilers.

So this person ran off the mouth propagating what has been said in different forms, using innuendos to make it sound believable only because they have nothing to back up the claims.  Nothing from the camps involved, quotes that are so obscure from "sources" that do not have a play in the situation to begin with...

Here's another example from a Bleacher Report entry :

Remember back in the “ol days” when the Peter Chiarelli said he was looking to trade Marc Savard.

Um...what ever happened to that novel idea?

If Marc Savard is still a Bruin on opening night, it will be devastating to the chemistry of the Bruins. It will be worse than when the Red Sox failed to trade Nomar Garciaparra after MONTHS of talking about trading him.

So I continued to go to www.massholesports.com and there was a few extra lines that was an opinion, nothing ground breaking.  I, for one, am sick of it.  

I confronted this person as he had nothing to back it up and it makes persons like myself, who is interested in getting the information straight from the horse's mouth.  You know...those wonderful things called FACTS.

While he did add more content after our exchange, there was, again, nothing substantial or new to back up the claims.  No direct quote from either party directly involved.  Just a shameless attempt to get some hits and make money on his site (admitted as much):

He brought up a good point in that the site does make money and that if he is writing that he should make some by directing to his site.  That I don't have a problem with.  

I applaud anybody that writes a good article, to make some coin and direct them to the site so that they can.  It's the content that I have a problem with.  Sites such as these might was well be called enquirer.com.

It's this type of writing (believe me, there are worst then this) that creates an imbalance and it causes the once reputable writers and reporters to jump on the speculation bandwagon.  Instead of a factual story, we get weeks of the same garbage with little to no new information.

This further dilutes the integrity of the sportswriter and degrades the craft into one big rumor mill.

I apologize for the rant, folks.  But I at least can say that it has been stated and that I hope it it brought to our attention to be careful what we write and then ask ourselves if it is necessary to write it to begin with.

Again, to be clear.  There is no intent to target or embarrass anyone.  The intent to make writers beware that we need to write with integrity.  We cannot be suckered into "news" without actually confirming it first.  No confirmation, in my opinion, is baseless until the parties involved confirms what is written.

This is Cory Ducey saying "Hit Hard, But Keep It Clean "