Tomorrow will be one full week since the game. Still zero evidence of any actual wrongdoing presented by anyone. Which "news" organization will be the first to make the following their lead story, as they made "Deflategate" this past week?
- WE APOLOGIZE -
We are embarrassed to admit that in our coverage of the so-called "Deflategate scandal" over the past week, we repeatedly reported assumption and speculation as fact, with no corroboration whatsoever. Further, we drew multiple insupportable conclusions from those unreliable premises while ignoring simple rules of logic, and called for innocent persons and organizations to receive punishment for events that, it now appears, never occurred. In doing so, we acted irresponsibly, becoming ourselves the very antithesis of what we, as journalists, must stand for. In our eagerness to rush "the story" out to you, we never challenged our own or others' assumptions, we neglected to do basic fact checking, and we never corroborated our sources or sought out credible evidence for any of the accusations made. We allowed ourselves to become caught up in the mob frenzy that somehow rose up around this non-story, and such behavior is inexcusable from any organization that purports to provide the news.
For their part, the New England Patriots have acquitted themselves throughout with a degree of patience, dignity, and restraint that most of us, it must be acknowledged, would find extremely difficult to match if faced with a similar barrage of insults and false accusations. It is an embarrassment to our entire profession that Bill Belichick, football coach, and the accused, should have to be the one to perform the kind of investigation and fact finding that we are paid for. We are ashamed at the thought that while we spent our time and energies helping to build a mountain of hysteria out of a non-existent molehill, Mr. Belichick was obliged to spend even one second of his time this week refuting baseless character assassination, rather than preparing his team to participate in the most celebrated and prestigious event in his own line of work.
We humbly apologize now to you, our public, for violating the trust you have in us, and to the New England Patriots organization, whom we have repeatedly defamed over the past several days. We can only hope that you and they can forgive us and allow us the opportunity to win back your trust. It is indeed ironic that the unjust damage done as a result of our abject failure this week was done to the reputation of an organization whose well-known simple motto is "Do Your Job." We did not do ours this week, and we deeply regret our actions.
