—–By Greg Michael
San Francisco Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada gained fame and fortune, and made hundreds of thousands of dollars on their book that could destroy the careers of some of the biggest stars in the game of baseball. Their entire book was based on illegal leaks of grand jury evidence and private medical records of individuals.
If the players were minor leaguers, and not Barry Bonds, and Jason Giambi there would not have been the market for their smear book. Bonds denies knowingly taking steroids, but admitted using creams and concoctions provided by trainer Greg Anderson, who was indicted along with Conte of BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative). Bonds thought the meds were liniment and flaxseed oil.
The press is not a judicial branch of government; it is free enterprise, the free press. Most of the newspaper’s content is entertainment, local political arguments, gossip and sports. It is not a noble cause to illegally smear successful athletes, as is being orchestrated by the French media and sports organizations to defame Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis.
An Orlando reporter states the simple truth: “The Chronicle reporters knew the risks when they made a promise they have to keep. Setting that vow aside, it would be easy to avoid jail. Just tell the judge who fed them the information.”
To leak grand jury information ruins the court proceedings. The leak could be from one of the possibly guilty BALCO defendants, a friend of the Chronicle editor or the reporters. It could be a washed up baseball player who has everything to gain and nothing to lose by smearing bigger stars. Just follow the money. One who didn’t benefit was Bonds. I think history will side with Bonds, because history now takes in the research of citizen journalists on the Web, and not just the mainstream news.
This week, Barry Bonds was able to tie Hank Aaron’s NL home run record in the same city where Aaron started and ended his career.
Bonds’ hit his 733rd homer Friday night in Milwaukee. Yet Bonds’ hometown paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, plays up its reporters as the heros for illegally leaking medical records and grand jury comments.
4 responses so far ↓
SCIENCE // September 27, 2006 at 4:57 pm |
obeah, witchcraft (1) Zalecenia Boderation comes from the word bother and that’s
DEESTANT // September 27, 2006 at 5:00 pm |
decent. (5) Autophytes when used of fruits and vegetables,
Mic // September 28, 2006 at 12:02 pm |
Rains is Bonds’ attorney. He pointed out in a rebuttle to The Chronicle reporters trying to use the courts to shield them, that Barry’s trainer and boyhood friend, Greg Anderson, has been found in contempt of court twice for refusing to testify and is in jail for a second term. Anderson, who earlier served three months after pleading guilty to steroid distribution and money laundering, has refused to tell the court whether he gave Bonds steroids. At issue is whether Bonds lied under oath when he told a grand jury in 2003 that he never knowingly took steroids.
Anderson’s testimony appears to be pivotal to making a successful perjury case against Bonds.
They (the Chronicle reporters) need to be in jail,” Rains said of the reporters, whose work cast Bonds as a steroid-enhanced cheat.
“Other media people, of course, take exception with my attitude about that; but I say unless they go to jail, you make a complete mockery of the grand jury system. Since when can anybody declare that the purpose of our dealing with this issue has a larger purpose, and that is to educate the public?
“How can these guys sit there and say, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ve convinced kids in the Central Valley that they shouldn’t take steroids. And look at all the good that is coming.’
Come on, give me a break. This is all about money. It is all about a newspaper that was having financial problems. It is all about them making dough and how much they can make [from the book smearing baseball greatest players].”
Follow the money.
foradil // February 3, 2007 at 8:19 am |
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