Because of my group's presentation about
Manti Te'o, I've focused on news about this athlete. The basic story is this:
Manti Te'o is an excellent college football player for Notre Dame. In
September, Manti's grandmother and girlfriend died on the same day, and right
after, Te'o played a phenomenal game leading the Fighting Irish to an
upset victory over Michigan State. Fans flocked to support Te'o in his
difficult time of mourning only to learn in December that Te'o's girlfriend
never existed. This news spawned a flurry of media coverage, and each newspaper
printed entertaining and intriguing but under-researched reports about Te'o's
story. One aspect of the reporting that struck me most was the lack of reliable
sourcing.
On January 23rd, USA Today published
an article titled, "Manti Te'o admits lying; phone records reportedly
support story." When I read about Manti's phone records, I quickly
realized this piece of the story, salient enough to include in the headline,
had no reliable source. The article states that "a person close to Manti Te'o" gave ESPN's Jeremy
Schaap his phone records from the period of time he supposedly knew Lennay
Kekua, the fake girlfriend. Directly after this paragraph, USA
Today adds a line saying that Schaap conducted a two-and-a-half-hour
interview with Te'o, which lends credibility to Schaap and the phone records
given to him. The next paragraph describes the phone record stating that Te'o
made and received more than 1,000 calls to and from a number in the
LA area where Kekua was supposedly fighting Leukemia. USA Today presents
this information about the phone records confidently and factually, but the
next line annihilates the validity of the previous paragraphs. After
building up the phone records as a true, reliable source, the article
states, "ESPN said the veracity of the documents could not be
independently confirmed." Even though USA Today knows the
phone records are plausibly false, it propagates them as fact.
This article also includes Brian Te'o, Manit's
father, and the football coach of the man who supposedly created the fake
girlfriend as sources. First Brian Te'o is quoted vouching for his son's
integrity by claiming, "he's not a
liar. He's a kid."As Manti's father, Brian is tightly wound into
his son's scandal and wants to defend and protect Manti. He
is automatically biased toward Manti and his words supporting Manti aren't
completely reliable. To better ascertain how truthful Manti is, it would be
necessary to speak with his professors, coaches, teammates, friends and
neighbors. Brian's words alone cannot prove that Manti has integrity. After
citing Brian and talking about Manti, USA Today discusses the
man, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, who created Kekua. The article surprisingly uses the
22 year old's high school football coach as the "expert" on
Tuiasosopo. USA Today reports that the coach, Jon Flemming,
said Tuiasosopo is "somebody I'd want my kid to grow up like.
He's responsible, respectful, disciplined, dedicated." Vouching for
Tuiasosopo in this situation is generous because according to the article, the
last time Flemming had significant contact with Tuiasosopo was four years
ago.Tuiasosopo certainly changed while transitioning form teenager to young
adult, so this source is outdated and invalid. The sources USA Today used
to vouch for Manti's and Tuiasosopo's characters were unreliable.
Throughout this report on Te'o, USA Today
constructs its arguments based on a shaky foundation of untrustworthy
sources.
No comments:
Post a Comment