University of Kentucky Men's Basketball - 6th edition

[Hoosier Red]

From the other stories filed it appears he was in Turkey covering the USA basketball,(which makes sense since he interviewed the Turkish team GM et al.) So he probably was talking to the assistant coach over the phone(may not have had a recorder for that particular phone line. A lot of reporters do so much with their phones, I'm sort of surprised cell phones don't have a recording option available.

But neither here nor there.

I guess this is my question for WMR.

Is it more likely that Thamel;
a) took notes of the conversation as it was going, typed up the notes when he finished the interview, and kept the quotes in a file to refer to when writing the story.

b) Interviewed the coach but didn't bother to take notes, and after the interview didn't bother to type the notes into anything coherent, but rather pulled all the quotes from memory. Oh and despite not really wanting to do the interview, the coach remembered everything exactly as it was asked and answered a week later.

c) Thamel interviewed the coach, has notes, and purposefully took the answers out of context in order to smear Kentucky and Calipari.

WMR, despite your protests, I do not have a love affair with any particular journalist, but it's clear from your posts and accusations that you have little idea as to how the news gathering business works.
I don't doubt that there are journalists who have an agenda against UK, or have their own biases. But it would be more interesting to read if you could actually identify them with something a little more nuanced than, "Thamel wrote something mean about Kentucky. He's biased, he's a hack, he doesn't know what he's doing. The newspaper business sucks."

[Scrap Irony]

Originally Posted by Hoosier Red

From the other stories filed it appears he was in Turkey covering the USA basketball,(which makes sense since he interviewed the Turkish team GM et al.) So he probably was talking to the assistant coach over the phone(may not have had a recorder for that particular phone line. A lot of reporters do so much with their phones, I'm sort of surprised cell phones don't have a recording option available.

Ah. Never had to go overseas. Didn't know that.

However, I have done a crapload of phone interviews. (Most interviews are done over the phone; it makes subjects more likely to say something they should/shouldn't (depending on your viewpoint).

I always had my tape recorder set up to the phone. It takes less than a minute to do it.

If the current is different and he didn't have a converter, perhaps he ran out of batteries.

[WMR]

Originally Posted by Hoosier Red

From the other stories filed it appears he was in Turkey covering the USA basketball,(which makes sense since he interviewed the Turkish team GM et al.) So he probably was talking to the assistant coach over the phone(may not have had a recorder for that particular phone line. A lot of reporters do so much with their phones, I'm sort of surprised cell phones don't have a recording option available.

But neither here nor there.

I guess this is my question for WMR.

Is it more likely that Thamel;
a) took notes of the conversation as it was going, typed up the notes when he finished the interview, and kept the quotes in a file to refer to when writing the story.

b) Interviewed the coach but didn't bother to take notes, and after the interview didn't bother to type the notes into anything coherent, but rather pulled all the quotes from memory. Oh and despite not really wanting to do the interview, the coach remembered everything exactly as it was asked and answered a week later.

c) Thamel interviewed the coach, has notes, and purposefully took the answers out of context in order to smear Kentucky and Calipari.

WMR, despite your protests, I do not have a love affair with any particular journalist, but it's clear from your posts and accusations that you have little idea as to how the news gathering business works.
I don't doubt that there are journalists who have an agenda against UK, or have their own biases. But it would be more interesting to read if you could actually identify them with something a little more nuanced than, "Thamel wrote something mean about Kentucky. He's biased, he's a hack, he doesn't know what he's doing. The newspaper business sucks."

You still don't get my issue with Thamel (or the journalism business), all these posts later. Jeez.

I wish you would stop with the weak-ass strawman arguments. You've been doing it for this entire discussion and it's about the weakest and lamest arguing technique known to man.

You either refuse or are simply incapable of getting my issues with these articles through your skull. I'm done.

[WMR]

Originally Posted by Scrap Irony

If he didn't record the interview, you can bet your bippy his editor is absolutely reading him the riot act. You wouldn't see that in print because editors keep that stuff behind closed doors.

Should he have recorded his interview? Truthfully, in the two years I spent writing, I never interviewed anyone without having a recorder right by me. Never once did I "forget" to turn it on. That cost me three or four interviews and definitely made people wary, but I was more concerned with getting things right (I tended, without the recorder, to make quotes "fit" grammatically. That made me uneasy.)

I knew some guys (generally older or less inclined to chase after stories) that insisted a recorder cramped their style.

Doesn't mean I was right or wrong. (Also doesn't mean Thamel is right or wrong.)

It does open up possibilities for those inclined to believe in conspiracy theories.

Hmm, and I bet you never had a source later renege on you either. Thamel is now 0-2.

Sounds like you were a hell of a reporter, too bad Pete Thamel doesn't share your integrity.

I bet that if you HAD for some reason done an interview without a tape recorder and later had the source turn around and bite you on the ass, you sure as hell wouldn't conduct ANY future interviews without that tape recorder rolling... not Pete Thamel. I mean, he WAS overseas after all--although he more than likely interviewed the ass't coach for this story a long time ago while he was still in the states--it's not like he could have put the phone on speaker phone and recorded it that way... (I'm sure someone can come up with an excuse for why he couldn't have reasonably been expected to do that, either. ) Bottom line, you do what it takes to get it on tape, ESPECIALLY when you've already had one source claim you misused their words.

Shades of Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair. Anyone who really cares about journalism should be condemning Thamel's tactics, not trying to justify them.

I can tell you what this man would say about not getting your sources cold... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_R._Murrow Now THAT was a newsman.

[BRM]

Maybe we should start talking about Bruce Pearl and the fact that his program is now under investigation by the NCAA. I bet that's a topic everyone can get behind.

[cumberlandreds]

Originally Posted by BRM

Maybe we should start talking about Bruce Pearl and the fact that his program is now under investigation by the NCAA. I bet that's a topic everyone can get behind.

Sounds like Pearl has the same phone plan that Calvin Sampson did.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=5552505

[Cedric]

Originally Posted by BRM

Maybe we should start talking about Bruce Pearl and the fact that his program is now under investigation by the NCAA. I bet that's a topic everyone can get behind.

It's the SEC. People down there care about one thing and it isn't character.

If you aren't cheating down there you aren't trying hard enough.

[Joseph]

Originally Posted by Cedric

It's the NCAA. People care about one thing and it isn't character.

If you aren't cheating down there you aren't trying hard enough.

Fixed it or you.

[Hoosier Red]

Originally Posted by WMR

You still don't get my issue with Thamel (or the journalism business), all these posts later. Jeez.

I wish you would stop with the weak-ass strawman arguments. You've been doing it for this entire discussion and it's about the weakest and lamest arguing technique known to man.

You either refuse or are simply incapable of getting my issues with these articles through your skull. I'm done.

You'll have to forgive my Indiana education I suppose and enlighten me as to the issue.

So far you've said;

-The NY Times only printed the story on Bledsoe to cover up UConn's recruiting scandal(because the NY Times company policy apparantly was to cover for UConn.) You've also said that the NY Times is a crap paper, and an example of how newspaper business is going down hill. When asked for a specific issue you have with it, you've decided to take the "high road" and not get into it.

-That Pete Thamel doggedly dug through trash cans and was otherwise unscrupulous in his investigation in Eric Bledsoe.

-That Pete Thamel didn't have any real proof of wrongdoing by Bledsoe but just threw an article together with no actual news in order to slander him (or Cal.)

-That Pete Thamel used a quote from one of his sources in a way to demean Enes Kanter's academic integrity, which you've decided is unethical because Kanter is just a "kid." You also seemed to think it unethical to question Eric Bledsoe's grades because he was just a kid and the press shouldn't be demeaning a kid's education.

-That Pete Thamel has been accused by TWO sources of taking their quotes out of context or being misquoted. This you seem to think was a smoking gun because surely no responsible reporter has a source claim to be misquoted. When informed that sources claim to be misquoted all the time you rush right by and say that NO responsible reporter would ever forgo a recorder to play back the interview. When informed that many do but all take notes as they go, you still seem to assume that Thamel is obviously wrong because two sources claimed to be misquoted.


Essentially if there's a general theme to the complaints, it's that Thamel has an agenda to burn Coach Cal or Kentucky or both. When presented with contradictions that would in my mind prove to show some balance to the pieces you've usually laughed them off(You call that balance? was one of the posts as best as I remember.) You've decided that a man who has written two articles in three months about NCAA investigations into UK,(neither of which was factually inaccurate) has a clear agenda to "get" Calipari. This doesn't even get into the weird Pat Forde conspiracy theory that because Thamel used to work at ESPN, Forde was actually funnelling him information.

As I've told you before, the NY Times is where newspaper writers want to end up. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that any writer who is working for the NY Times, probably doesn't have much time for an agenda other than writing quality articles because when you work for a place that's considered the gold standard of journalism, you are at risk of being knocked off by the next writer.

[Scrap Irony]

Originally Posted by WMR

Hmm, and I bet you never had a source later renege on you either. Thamel is now 0-2.

No, I had a bunch of them complain to my editor, to other sportswriters, to each other, to anyone that would listen. People often forget what they said, or they lie.

It's really that simple.

Having said that, Thamel has written two stories about Kentucky prospects/ players without much meat to them. Neither looks to be particularly damning, as Kanter's supposed "salary" would roughly equal a private school education anywhere in America.

The good news for Kentucky fans should be that there is apparently little reporters can find about the program even if it is cheating.

The bad news is that reporters are looking.

[WVRed]

Originally Posted by Joseph

Fixed it or you.

Coming from Clifton, where fans are still living in the glory days of Huggs, Thugs, and Drugs.

[macro]

Originally Posted by Cedric

It's the SEC. People down there care about one thing and it isn't character.

If you aren't cheating down there you aren't trying hard enough.

Yep, the SEC, and especially Calipari and UK, have cornered the market on cheating and sleazy dealings. It doesn't happen anywhere else.

[Cedric]

Classic SEC spin.

"Everybody cheats!"

The conference is a joke from the top to the bottom in every sport. It's rotten to the core and luckily it's getting exposed almost daily.

[Brutus]

Originally Posted by WMR

That Pete Thamel is some great reporter.

There is no guarantee that the NCAA will clear Kanter. I believe they will, but there are no guarantees when the NCAA gets involved.

NYT as crappy as ever. Love letting the jilted lovers in Turkey disparage the character of a 17 y/o kid in your paper. You would think the egg Thamel got on his and his paper's face from the Bledsoe debacle would have smartened them up a bit... guess it just made them more determined to be boorish.

Or perhaps what they said happened is a possibility and the paper had sufficient grounds to run with the story. Here you are disparaging a writer's integrity without having any clue whatsoever what really happened.

[Brutus]

Originally Posted by WMR

Enes Kanter is 18, right?

Still waiting for your verification on that.

As to your latest post, as I posted earlier, I am not trying nor am I interested in trying to convince you skeptics of anything. I bring stuff to this thread that I think a UK FAN might be interested in reading. Seriously, give it a rest with the attempted 'gotcha' stuff, please. I really hope you're capable of discerning the differences between an opinion piece in a blog type setting versus a piece of supposed 'serious journalism.' Maybe not? Seems pretty obvious to me. One is about opinions, the other is supposed to be about FACTS. Of course, facts and quotes seem to be rather malleable when they're in Pete Thamel's hands.

BOTH of Pete Thamel's articles concerning UK have had a source later claim that they were misquoted. Focus on that if you can.

He didn't say misquoted. He said "misrepresented."

There's a huge difference. Misquoted means the words were not what he said they were. Misrepresented means he didn't mean it in the way it was presented or sounded.

My experience is that "misrepresented" means, "I said more than I wish I had, and I need to cover my tracks."