The Press Box - Oppo Dump! | The Press Box (Ep. 572)

Episode Date: February 12, 2019

How former New York Times editor Jill Abramson got cancelled (03:00), Kevin Durant and the future of NBA media relations (28:30), and Jeff Bezos vs. The National Enquirer (43:15). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. The Ringer's YouTube channel is nearing 100,000 subscribers. So make sure you check us out on YouTube.com slash The Ringer to keep up with the latest NBA desktop with Jason Concepcion, slow newsday with Kevin Clark and tons of Ringer original videos like Halliluca or Kobe come back. Also, be sure to check out all of our NBA trade deadline coverage. Kevin O'Connor wrote about the ongoing pursuit of Anthony Davis. Dan Devine wrote about the five biggest questions after the trade deadline. and Bill Simmons and Ryan Rusilla recorded a live trade deadline reaction podcast, which you can watch on YouTube.com slash The Ringer or listen to on Apple and Spotify.

David, people on the Twitter machine got mad this week because every negative news story about a 2020 presidential candidate is being called an quote, opo dump. What's a better and less unappealing term to use than opo dump? Oh my gosh. It seems so unnecessary. I think this is, I mean, it depends. If it's true, then I think we can just call it a fact, right?

I think I, I, I, I, I'm not the, I haven't been in this world for too long, but I think back in the house, yon days of journalism, they used to call that a lead. Yes. Somebody would give you some information. A hot tip? Yeah. Follow it up with some research and some reporting. Yeah. And it sort of begs a question of if you got true information from somebody who was, let's say, on another campaign.

should you not print it, right? What if information came from people who had a stake in the matter? That's okay, right? That's not the worst thing in the world. Yeah. Yeah, be skeptical, but you can verify all that. If you can verify, you should run with it. We are the friendly dump of media podcasts.

This is the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Friendly dump. The press box is the media podcast where you're not allowed to tell us whether or not you record an interview. We don't care. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the ringer. And three big topics we got for you today, David. First, Jill Abramson was a decorated journalist. Then she wrote a book about the media and now she's an undecorated journalist. How a former New York Times editor got canceled. Second, and this will shock you, David, but Kevin Durant laid into NBA reporters last week. And beyond the pure titillation, I think the blast was a vision of the

future of NBA media relations. I will explain. And finally, the founder of Amazon gives journalists everywhere the license to write the headline, Bezos exposes Pecker, a case of reverse journalistic extortion, plus our weekly notebook dump and of course, the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, let's start with Jill Abramson. And I think it's important to say right off the top that Jill Abramson, what she did in her book, The Merchants of Truth, is plagiarism. full stop, unequivocal plagiarism, as vices Michael Moynihan and others pointed out. And I think it's important to say that because Jill Abramson is running away from the word plagiarism like Tyreek Hill running away from defensive backs. Here's Brian Stelter of CNN trying to pin her down this weekend on reliable sources when she claims that the problems can be traced to the book's footnotes.

But even if I include a footnote, I still can't steal their words, word for word the way that you did. Well, if you give them proper credit, you can. Not in a book. It doesn't matter if I put a footnote 300 pages later. If I do that in a book, that's plagiarism. That's word for word stealing of other people's work. Well, that, you know, that's your position. I don't see it that way.

But it meets the Harvard definition of plagiarism, and you work at Harvard. It meets the New York Times definition of plagiarism where you worked. You're saying you didn't plagiarize. I'm saying that I made some areas. in the way I credited sources, but that there was no attempt to pass off someone's ideas, opinions, and phrasings as my own. These were all factual passages that unfortunately did not match up exactly to the right footnotes, but they are credited in the footnotes elsewhere. Right, they're credited at the very end of the book, but the words are stolen from other sources,

the actual words. So again, to repeat, when you take direct text from various sources and put it in your book called The Merchants of Truth and don't put quote marks around that text, that's plagiarism. It doesn't matter if the footnot's there. It doesn't matter if the footnot's not. It doesn't matter. Here's where I want to take this discussion, David, because I think I don't want to get us totally bogged down on the particulars here.

My question for you is, why do you think Abramson has such an aversion to copping to plagiarism. Why is that particular journalistic crime so hard for her just to say, I did it, I'm sorry, I'll fix it on the next round of books? Well, I think the answer is sort of in the question. First of all, I mean, it's, she has to be just totally pinned to the ground by under the weight of irony here, right? I mean, it's just that she would write a book about journalism called Merchants of Truth. and have this be the, I mean, just all that anybody wants to talk about and justifiably. You know, we talk about this sort of thing in the realm of politics, sometimes in the realm of sports. I don't think that it's, I don't think, I mean, I think there's something just sort of deeply human about the desire to sort of dodge the charge rather than owning up to it, even when that would seemingly put you on the, on the right path. but and also you know I think that there's I mean I'm not sure that in this specific instance that owning up to it would really make a big difference in terms of this media push I mean she's she's out there doing the shows to promote the book and I'm sure most of these appearances were scheduled ahead of the ahead of the controversy and I don't think that an apology on show number one would affect the fact that I mean would keep show number two from digging into this stuff so I think sort of fighting back I mean in the very very It is sort of like a political move, but I think fighting back, she probably sees that as her best move.

And someone here at the ringer pointed out, and I think that it's sort of borne out to be true that I'm not sure that the combat and that the fighting back is the best look for, but that there's, that, you know, getting in the weeds about the technicalities of footnotes or making it seem like it's an argument that's in the weeds, I think, you know, we'll probably leave most most viewers to believe that believing that that she didn't do anything

terribly terribly wrong which is not the case. So I mean, I think that in some sense in some sense I think that it's you know, it is a sort of canny decision. I think I think that's,

I think you're exactly right and I think the lesson is when journalists get shoved into a corner and caught red-handed with obvious wrongdoing, they turn out to be just as weasily and truth averse as the people

they cover, right? You know, we would like to think that we are paragon's of some kind of virtue. But you look at her, I mean, I read this Vox interview that she did, and she says, I had a fact checker and several people helping me with research, and I did many drafts of many chapters full of factual materials and, you know, mistakes were made. Somebody like Jill Abramson, who was the Washington Bureau Chief of the New York Times, surely knows that mistakes were made is such a classic passive voice phrase. of political blame shifting, that it has its own Wikipedia page just to chronicle the number of times that's been used. And here is a political journalist using the phrase, mistakes were made. And by the way, I think I saw that on Josh Marshall's Twitter feed, just so I have my attribution correct by my trailing footnotes. I want to make sure that's all in line here. I think a couple of other things, though, why she can't say this. And by the way, I'm not doing PR for Jill Abramson. If she wants to, if she wants to revisit this on every single show. That's fine with me. But I just, I am, I'm curious why this charge when it's so

obvious. I mean, I think the other thing, did you read this Tom Skokka column that he wrote in, uh, hmm, daily, his blog? And he writes about these reporters and writers who are kind of too big to, to be charged with plagiarism in a way. He brings in Fareed Zakaria and Doris Kearns Goodwin. And he says, and you, and you hear it in the, in the way she talks about the sentences there. She's the message, uh, Skokka writes is that sentences. The sentences, Abrams stole weren't good enough as writing to count as stolen property, though they were good enough to put down in a book as if they had been her own writing. And it's almost that it's like plagiarism is such a penny-any crime. If you had to compare it to like an actual crime, it would be

like stealing someone's mail or something. You know, it's just so lame and so base that it's almost like she can't bring herself to just say, I just did the lamest most obvious thing that a news clerk at the New York Times would do. Right. Yeah. God, I have a lot of things, a lot of things to touch on here. I mean, again, I don't want to get too far in the weeds, but the quote, that quote that we played keeps coming up. And she says, Abramson says, you know, the trailing phrase notes are okay if you give them

proper credit or the way that she, you know, whatever, this sort of plagiarism, whatever she's being accused of, if you give them proper credit. And there is a grain of a kernel of truth there. I mean, the proper credit she should have given was to put the excerpts in quotation marks on the page. It's not a matter of, you know, it's not a matter of just like an error in citation. Now, I can speak as someone who's written a book and who used trailing phrase notes and who found himself in, you know, these sorts of situations. I don't believe I was ever accused of plagiarism, but, but, you know, one can. Let's do it right here today.

one can understand, someone in my position can be sympathetic, right? I mean, you can, you understand how it took place, right? I mean, you're taking, especially in the internet era, you know, what was once, what were once handwritten notes that you would sort of paraphrase in the process of taking them become cut and paste jobs from websites into Google Docs. You don't remember when you look back which things you rewrote and which things you just pasted wholesale. And then when you're used to working in the, in the world of newspapers, where you're you do have a fact-checking desk that this is their job to make sure this stuff doesn't happen. And you find yourself working in books where that is rarely, if ever, the case, that there is those sorts of dedicated employees.

I mean, in most cases, it's the author's responsibility to hire someone to do that kind of work themselves. you know, there is a sort of obliviousness that a writer after, you know, of a certain level of esteem or not, you know, could have. You know, I guess my only devil's advocate argument in her defense would be, you know, this is clear, what she did was clearly plagiarism. But, you know, it's sort of mind-boggling to think that there would be no crime if she had rewritten those excerpts 10% more than she did. Okay. So you're opening up an interesting question here, which I have seen people kind of get a skew on on Twitter, right?

Resolved Jill Abramson committed plagiarism. Yes. I have seen her also accused of things on Twitter that are more in a second category of journalistic misdemeanor, which is, I don't know any other word for it than the dick move, right? Yeah. There's plagiarism where I'm stealing some. sentence from David Shoemaker. And then there's the Dick move where David Shoemaker had 10 examples of why Jill Abramson's book is bad.

I took all 10 and wrote my own original review about why Jill Abramson's book was bad, not stealing any of your language, but not giving you any kind of generous credit, you know, somewhere saying these examples are drawn from David Shoemaker's excellent run down, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes. And you're right. But I think, I mean, part of this is I think plagiarism. weirdly gets elevated to the ultimate journalistic crime.

Yes. If I had to list the venial sins, it's probably no higher than second behind Fabulism, right? Fabulism's got to be worse if you're introducing fake information into the, you know, into the world. So there's a little bit of that. But yeah, I mean, but look, I think journalism as some, as a newspaper veteran like, like she knows, is a very derivative exercise.

And what you bring to it is. is either rewriting it yourself and putting it in your own words, no matter how exciting or exciting they are. And the second thing is, if you don't, and if you can't be bothered to do that, then to credit someone else who had to do that. And, you know, one thing she uses, it's really irritating. And I think this came out when way back in the, uh, Rouschalit at the New Republic. Remember who got, this was like 19 New Republic scandals ago.

So if you forgot, I totally understand. But she was the same thing where it was like, oh, the stuff I took was only boilerplate sentences, right? But if it was so easy to write boilerplate sentences, why didn't you just write them? Right? If they're so unmemorable and easy, you'd just rhyme yourself. And like you said, change them by 30%. Just write them in a different way. That is journalism, right?

And most of, like, so much of what we do is not just, is not grabbing completely, you know, one of your, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're. piece is not a hundred percent original discovery, right? Right. Even a piece that has tons of reporting, has lots of backfill, lots of history, stuff like that. You rewrite it. That's what you do. Well, I think that the answer, I mean, to your original question of why she is, you know,

so intent on denying this charge is relates to what you said about, you know, plagiarism being elevated to the, you know, the number one sin in journalism. And that I'm sure on some level, she believes her crime to be a misdemeanor. but the only name for it is, you know, is capital murder. And there's, and that disconnect at least to her or to her defenders is, you know, what's leading, you know, this spate of denial. Yeah, but I think, you know, I think part of that's writing about the media, right? If you're a cop, you can't get caught jaywalking and illegal parking all the time because you're a cop, right? Right.

If you're a cop, you can't, ah, I just had a one DUI. You know, you're really going to blame a guy for that? You kind of have to have a perfect slate, right? You kind of have to try as best as you can to get it right. And I saw her using the phrase, I think she was an op-o. Was it waging an oppo campaign? This is what she accused vice of, right? And I understand that like what she's doing again is trying to blame shift and say,

oh, it's their fault. They're mad at the way I portrayed them. Yeah, they are, by the way. And if you're a journalist who is writing about other journalists and you're going to write about them, she calls it a balanced portrait. You can read it as negatively, whatever you want to read it. Yes, they're going to come for you. Of course they are.

So you better make sure everything's right. And you better make sure you don't leave your flank open by doing stupid stuff like borrowing a sentence or getting your facts wrong. Of course they're going to come for you. If I write something negative about a journalist, of course they're going to call me or email me pissed off. Yes, that's what they're going to do. You can't get anything wrong. And to call it, you know, Apo, whatever she's called it. I mean, that's just the most, I mean, on some level, that's the most probably.

part of the whole thing is to say it was she was they're waging an opo campaign when she she cannot believe that to be true yeah right so i mean to to say oh well we have disagreements over uh you know what's what's an acceptable level of journalistic borrowing or whatever you know that's just like muddling words but to like just to outright lie about i mean i mean and and listen maybe there was a meeting advice where they said we got to go after her because they're going to make us look bad although i don't really believe that there's anything in the book nothing that i've read that that that does anything to alter my my view of what vice is. I mean, there's a couple of, you know, stories that sort of seem to sort of back up what they've done. But overall, I would say, you know, if she was

trying to be critical, it wasn't wildly successful. No, but it's like, I mean, to me, even an op-o campaign is like, why would you blame them? Why would you blame anybody if you wrote a negative thing about them for then, like, taking a close look at your words to find out if you made any mistakes. Right. And the first, I mean, the opening volley as far as I... What's wrong with Apo? The opening volleys in this supposed appo campaign were vice employees, not senior staffening like that, just pointing out factual errors about themselves, right? I mean, it was people going on to Twitter and saying, wow, she like, like deliberately tried to make me look like a less, of a person than I am or like a, like a less serious than I am or, or, you know, just tried to make

light of, you know, what I'm contributing to the, to the journalistic world. And Moynihan pointed this out, too, that, like, it doesn't matter if they are waging an opposition campaign, right? Because what she was doing was still plagiarism. Yeah, I mean, it's really beside the point. And I think the point that you were getting at that you made was, was exactly right. You can't, I mean, some of these errors, or some of this plagiarism, some of everything, I mean, some of this would be more forgivable if she were coming from a different. platform and she's but but she's not right I mean you these are the most basic tenets of journalism and she was and she had one of the most significant jobs in all

of journalism and and to be fighting it like a like a political spat is just like it's just so beneath her that it that it just delegitimizes the whole enterprise she knows she knows the difference she know yeah of course and the thing about her not recording her interviews did we did you mean you didn't mention that yet no speaking of 15 scandals ago go ahead. Well, she, at some point, I mean, I, was it 15 scandals ago? I just, I mean, three scant. Three Jill Abramson's scandals ago, yes. She, she said, someone asked her about her, about note taking or about recording or whatever, and she just claimed to have a photographic

memory. I mean, was that, is that, am I getting it correctly? She, she just remembers everything and writes it down. And listen, I mean, that's, that, again, that's the sort of thing that's, like, charming to hear from, like, an Esquire feature writer in the 50s, you know, I mean, but it's not, that's not the sort of thing you expect to hear from someone with her resume, right? And it's, but it all goes into the same pot of bizarre irresponsibility in this process. Can I say my favorite part about the, about no record gate? Yeah. Was when every journalist on Twitter stood on their hind legs to say, well, I record my interviews.

Oh, oh, we're talking about, let me tell you about my. process and then everybody goes into the thing like every journalist just wants to tell you about their process i mean they could have written nothing and they're just like let me let me tell how i put my pieces together i want to go no no i don't just write something else i really don't need to hear the whole i don't want to hear how you put your stories together i just want to read your good stories um and this was like an excuse for everybody to go now when i do an interview i have a tape recorder running and i have this i like no please please just just write a story don't don't do this you know we don't we don't need, no, don't teach me. Don't, don't teach. Just, just go back. Please. The other thing,

one last thing about this, because as a book publishing veteran, I want to get you to get at this too. I'm going to put my footnote on the front end this time. Jason Fagon, reported the San Francisco Chronicle, writes about or tweets about how he thinks this is, this is due to her not having written the whole book herself, right? Okay. And she does have this note in the acknowledgments, thanking people for doing parts of the work. And she says, Fagone says, Abramson can't defend herself by saying, quote, look, I didn't write the book and a lot of people at my level don't because it would sound even worse. Tell us as a book publishing veteran how that whole thing plays.

Is it an apocryphal memory or an implanted memory that Charles Barkley claimed that he had not read his own biography when it came out as an autobiography? I believe he was misquoted in his own autobiography, yes. Yeah, I think that's possible. Although I find it from having been inside the walls of book publishing, I find it a little bit hard to imagine that Jill Abramson would have gotten a book contract on those same terms as like, you know, the Yao Ming autobiography that's going to go into elementary school libraries or whatever. I don't mean the full, you know, let's get the ghostwriter. Let's get Jerry B. Jenkins in here. I mean, I mean, I had a research assistant who drafted Port. of the manuscript for me, and then I went in and rewrote them, not realizing that maybe some

stuff had slipped in. And so I thought, oh, this is a nice sentence, not realizing it was from somewhere else. Yeah, the thing you hear from writers, and you don't have to have worked in book publishing and know this. But, I mean, from my, you know, writing career, I know this firsthand. The thing you always hear about writing books is don't do it, right? Because, I mean, it's just, even as someone who is a professional writer who writes every day, writing a book is just a tidal wave. I mean, it's just, it's physically painful. And it's a whole lot of work. And and yeah, a lot of people have research assistance. A lot of people have have assistance in the writing. And, and all of these, again, not trying to ascribe too much benefit of the doubt here,

but all of the errors, all of the, the, the crimes of plagiarism here, I mean, are very clearly just, the, the problem was, you know, not enough time, too much work, you know, and little, just things, not just falling by the wayside, but I think just, just, you know, turn, like I said before, just turning scraps of notes or what you thought was a note into a, you know, into a line in your book, that's something that, you know, that's just a simple error that if you had more time or if you had a shorter piece that you were working on, you might have avoided. But yeah, I think that that's, I think that there's some of that. And I think that her defensiveness, to me, I mean, I think that if that is true, and I think there's probably a kernel of

truth to it, that the defensiveness kind of reads more to me like maybe she had more help than even her publisher knew. But, but, you know, we'll see. We'll see. I mean, I, or maybe we'll probably never see, but it's a, that kind of stuff definitely happens. And this is the, this is the result of that sort of, it's just another element of carelessness, you know, to hand off something that you're going to have your name attached to. Speaking of unintentional plagiarism, David, it's time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week. Yes.

Where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. The Alliance of American Football David kicked off on Saturday. I don't know if you caught any of that action, any hot San Antonio commander's action. But Brad Davis and Lumack, two listeners, remind us that it's always an overwork Twitter joke when you have a new league to claim that you've been a lifelong fan

of a given team. Or to claim that every long run and pass is a new league record. So thanks, guys, for flagging those. Right before we came on the podcast today, Kyler Murray, Heisman Trophy-winning Oklahoma quarterback, finally decided that he's going to play NFL football instead of going to play baseball with the Oakland Athletics, the team that drafted him.

Okay? It was an overwork Twitter joke this morning to say, Kyler Murray, colon, why I'm leaving the athletics. Good stuff. And that was all over the place. Thanks to Matthew Ganson for that one. And finally, David, a giant scandal continues to unfold in the State House in Richmond, Virginia. Sheesh.

Is it, am I so messed up that I couldn't help but think about Larry Sabato, you know, the reliable dial-a-quote of Virginia politics? How excited must Larry Sabado be the last two weeks? I mean, probably sad, certainly, right, about the sad events in Richmond. But do you think he's working like nine phones right now? I mean, how many calls? That guy gets calls all the time. Imagine now.

I opened the New York Times the other day. And this was the Larry Sabado quote. This collection of scandals proves beyond a doubt that Virginia has not progressed as far as it thought it has. And it has a past. It still hasn't come to terms with. If you did kind of like the all-sumorizing quote that really doesn't. doesn't say anything. Not everybody can do that.

Not everybody can do that. Great stuff. I also love this tweet from HuffPose, Jeffrey Young. I have checked my high school yearbook. And while there are no racist photos in it, there are tons of racist people dressed normally. Anybody who grew up in the South can identify with that one.

Dave and I went to high school together, incidentally. Just a note. All right, David. For the overworks. Ralph Northam, the blackface using and also blackface adjacent Virginia governor who's still hanging on to power as Democrats call on him to resign.

It was an overworked Twitter joke to call his recent efforts the War of Northam aggression. And Matthew Zytland, who sends that in, points out that when Northam won the Virginia gubernatorial race in 2017, people on Twitter also called that the War of Norham aggression. Listen, there's just a little, limited number of puns that we have to find uses for at any given time.

Right, right. You got a good overworked Twitter joke. It doesn't really, you just got to find a hook for it. It doesn't really matter if it's the best hook. Yeah. And finally, on that same note, this one, David, when we said more black faces in government, maybe we should have been more specific. Thanks to Bug for that one.

All right, David. Before we move on to Kevin Durant versus the media, let's take a quick break. Clean up your remote control clutter with control center by, Kavo. Control Center simplifies your home theater so you can control everything connected to your TV with one easy-to-use remote with voice control. Plug in your streamer, sound system, cable, or satellite, even your game console, and Control Center does it all. Don't waste time fiddling with different remotes or weeding through messy search results to get the content you want. One universal voice remote controls it all, so just say what you want and watch and let Control Center handle the rest. In fact, you can enjoy every second of couch time and easily switch between content without moving a muscle.

Let Control Center take your at-home entertainment experience from stressful to simple and enjoy what you want when you want it with ease. Shop now to get 40% off Control Center with the promo code press box. That's $59.95, 40% off regular pricing of $99.95. Service plan required for 45 days free. Control Center is available at C-A-A-V-O.com. Com control center by Kavo, one remote that does it all. All right, David, last week, Kevin Durant was in a period of silence, aka not talking to the sports writers and regional cable types after the game.

Naturally, people got interested in why he wasn't talking, especially since the New York Knicks, the team a lot of people think Durant is going to sign with this summer, had just cleared out a ton of salary cap space, almost if they knew Durant was coming to New York. On Wednesday, KD, as he's known, face the media, and here's what he said. I have nothing to do with the Knicks. I don't know who traded Porzingis. They got nothing to do with me.

I'm trying to play basketball. Y'all come here every day. Ask me about free agency. I ask my teammates, my coaches. You rile up the fans about it. Let us play basketball. That's all I'm saying. And now when I don't want to talk to y'all, it's a problem with me.

Come on, man. Grow up. Grow up. Yeah, you grow up. Come on, bro. I come in and go to work every day. I don't cause no problems. I play the right way.

I try to play the right way. I try to be the best player I can be, every possession. What's the problem? What am I doing to y'all? So, who are you? Why do I got to talk to you? Tell me. Is that going to help me do my job better?

No, bro. I didn't feel like talking. Who are you, David? Who are you? I don't want to make too much of this because if you just hear what he's saying, I just want to play basketball. He said, you're twisting my words at another point during that. This is what every athlete who's ever been pissed at the media has said.

This is the playbook, right? I just think it's interesting. We've gotten this point where NBA players have officially, or I guess unofficially, you can't officially become a shadow general manager, unofficially become a shadow general manager, right? Like Kevin Durant, like LeBron, like all these guys. And now they find themselves facing criticism from the media for being a shadow general manager, right? Not just for how Kevin Durant plays, not just because he missed the big shot and got called Mr. Unreliable by the Oklahoma City paper.

But now he's getting blamed for orchestrating things around the league. What do you make of that? And is this where we're going to go now in our media relations with our, our, favorite NBA superstars? Yeah. I mean, listen, I think that there's a little bit hard to talk in great specifics, but there is a feeling, well, first of all, this is what we're interested in in the NBA right now.

We've had this conversation before. You know, the NBA games do, you know, fine ratings, but it's clear from, you know, the general direction of web traffic that people are more interested in trade rumors and, and Speculation. You know, free agency and all this sort of speculation. Hypothetical. Yeah, hypotheticals. Yeah, hypotheticals.

And it's the dirt. It's the gossip, you know. I think that there's certainly a feeling amongst fans that there is sort of a shadow NBA going on, right? I mean, people, reporters, podcasters such as our boss Bill Simmons, people, you know, will openly discuss. the tampering that is surely going on and the sort of way in the and the and the fine lines between tampering with a capital T and with a lowercase T or whatever however you want to delineate it. There's you know there's also this there's also amongst people like bill like in all the big names we there've been discussions from you know about about Adrian Wojernowski uh lots of

different people who will um who will Brian Winhorst I think there was a specific example that's not coming to mind, but who will who will kind of say after the fact, yeah, we all knew that was coming when a big story happens. Big story breaks, right? Right. And so there's this feeling that there is a level of knowledge in the inside that the fans aren't getting. And so even though I think that

the reaction to the Knicks Mavericks trade that sort of opened up all this, you know, cap room to potentially get Kevin Durant is a little bit overblown. and you can listen to Zach Lowe's wonderful podcast. I forgot who his guest was, but he discussed it right afterwards, and he made the really compelling case

that this is just a really simple dollars and cents, you know, decision that they made. And regardless, I mean, certainly there was something else going on, but you can make, it's not as one-sided as you think. But I do think that there's, you know, just the assumption that there's all this sort of backroom dealing going on. and whether or not Kevin Durant is fully, you know, in the loop on that, you know, whatever, it's, it, I can, I can understand his frustration, right? I mean, the stuff about the teammates, the stuff about messing, you know, messing with the, messing up, you know, his relationships in real time. I mean, that's, that's, that's, I can understand why that'd be frustrating. But, you know, all you can really do is sort of the inverse of what, of what Kyrie Irving did at the beginning of the season and just say, I'm not going to sign with the Knicks or I've never talked to the Nix like literally this has never happened. You have to have a declarative

The Bull statement whether or not it's true. Wait a minute though. We haven't said that what it hasn't stopped anything with Kyrie has it though? Haven't we? Aren't we only speculating about Kyrie Irving's next destination all year? It well yes, but this is also like the are you running for president thing that that always kind of raises my hackles. It's like you like how much how much time and energy do politics reporters waste trying to goad people into telling you know saying something a little bit less than. specific about whether or not they're running for president or, you know, to get the non-denial denial, just and that becomes the news story. I mean, sure. We should have, we should have just, like, designated zones where we can have these sorts of conversations. And then, and then actually just like, you know, report the news the rest of the time. I get where he's coming from. Wait, it's like three seconds in the pain or something like that. Yeah, exactly. Yes.

You got to get out. I feel a little bit of sympathy. On the other hand, I think what's happened is if you're an NBA player and you've suddenly, a. crude general managing player movement agency in in your sport like almost no player has has ever gotten in any sport ever right um you know i mean how many people are either unhappy moving teams forcing a trade just in the last like two weeks right um you would take this trade off that you're going to get annoying more annoying questions in the press conference about where you're signing next year or are teams doing things because there's a secret understanding or secret wink wink that you're going to go there. I think you take that trade if you're an NBA player.

It's really annoying, but like all of a sudden, you get to do what you want. And by the way, thank goodness from my point of view. Yeah, you got this exactly right. I mean, this is a conversation about agency, right? But it's not, but we should not. Yeah, but we should not. I don't think you can, but you're still going to get a. annoyed. And I don't think that

despite the level of power, and I mean, despite the fact that players like Durant have supplanted the teams and in some sense supplanted the league as the public facing voice of professional basketball, we can't read every time they talk into an open mic as the official

statement on a subject, right? You're allowed to be pissy after a game. Sure. You know, when people are crammed into your face and you opened up by saying the right thing. This is a very, this is the standard response. People are always mad. And, you know, he was responding, I think he was particularly mad about a specific article that he, that he went on to discuss by, by Ethan Strauss. And, you know, there's, there is, I think that, I think that that,

that, you know, setting that piece aside, there's, there's, there's always going to be legitimate gripes with the way you're written about, right? Oh, yeah. It's not just a matter of, it's not just a matter of, it's not just a matter of, or illegitimate gripes. Yeah. Sure, but, but, but, but, but, you know, those, those two things, you know, there mean, there's plenty of both of those to go around. But yeah, I mean, I mean, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, that it's, I think that we, you know, we shouldn't, we shouldn't be too hard on him for one outburst because he's human, but you're right. I mean, in some sense, it's, the playing field is shifted to such a degree that, you know, we have to take even those outbursts somewhat

seriously. Yeah, I mean, I thought this was illustrated by LeBron's thing on Instagram this week, more than anything. It was when Harrison Barnes got traded by the Mavericks and a trade that followed that trade we were just talking about. And he says, when a player wants to be traded or leaves a franchise, he's a selfish slash ungrateful player. But when they trade, release, wave, cut you, et cetera, et cetera, it's best for the team. I'm okay with both. Honestly, I truly am. Just call a spade a spade, right? So he's essentially making this argument, right? Why is it when we want to go somewhere, we're selfish, et cetera, right? But when a general manager like Danny Aange just dumps us in a trade, ain't no problem. You know, that was what was best for the

franchise. There was a good response, though, getting to what I'm talking about, I saw this from Dallas radio host Jeff Wade, where he said, I don't agree with, disagree with LeBron's take. The problem is that LeBron just tried to trade half his team to the Pelicans. So if LeBron is arguing, hey, NBA players are real people, they have feelings. Let's not treat them like assets and salary dumps and all this other stuff, which I agree can be kind of dehumanizing. LeBron wasn't LeBron kind of trying to do that? Or at least we think in order to get Anthony Davis. I want to actually take this conversation a different way

because I think there's one thing that's interesting that I heard Ryan Rosillo say on the BS podcast at the trade deadline, that big blowout that he and Bill did. He said something along the lines of this. Look, the media right now, the sports media, like it has never been before, is incredibly pro player right now. And thank goodness for that, right? they are identifying with players more than they ever have.

And, you know, the players should have the power to move around, not the billionaire asshole who owns a team. Great. What Rosilla went on to say was, even if you feel this way, shouldn't you admit over the last few weeks, months, years, that this is actually causing incredible chaos around the league? And at some point, it sort of gets insane. So he's essentially saying, can you be a sports writer who says, I think players should, have all or most of the power. And at the same time, admit that the players using that power to its fullest is making the NBA kind of insane and weird and almost, you know, straining a lot of relationships

right now. What do you think of that point? Well, I mean, I think that there's, I think that he's asking the right question. And I think that, you know, I mean, Rissillo asks a lot of the right questions and a lot of interesting questions. and I think that, I mean, I think that we're not used to a sports landscape in which you can ask a question and not have an answer. And that's what makes this whole conversation so difficult, right? I mean, there's a whole lot of, there's a whole lot of weird duality in this.

I mean, I think part of the reason why Durant and I mentioned Carrie Irving are kind of getting it right now is because I don't know what the, I don't know, I'm assuming the NBA doesn't hand out rules about what reporters can ask about. No. But they, reporters seem to be comfortable asking about free agency because that's a conversation that we've been having, you know, for years, but not asking LeBron about running a shadow government,

you know, out of Los Angeles and like trying to force a trade of one of his, one of his, you know, one of his best friends, one of, one of his agency's other clients to his own team. Um,

and like you said, trade away the, you know, the whole existing roster. You know, some, it's interesting that, you know, the kind of question, the kind of directed questions that, you know, get, they get chosen, I guess I should say. Yeah. I mean, it's probably no different, you know, the difference is the way those two guys handle the media, you know, probably is the simplest answer. I also think the Durant thing is, however you want to say it, it became a public story this year because his teammate was pissed about it.

Yeah. So it's not like people are just speculating. This happened. And to the Rosillo question, it's interesting. I mean, to me, the one thing is it's sort of weird for the media to complain because, as you pointed out, all these hits are accruing to us, right? We are becoming, you know, the more speculation, the more I want out of here, the more I want to trade, that all becomes page views. That all becomes money for reporters because they get to cover it. they get to report on it, all that stuff, including us here at the ringer.

The other thing I'd say about it is it's weird that like when the commissioner and the owners had most of the power of the NBA, like when David Stern was worried about tattoos and cornrows, you know, and making players wear suits and all that stuff, that the media did not do enough to stand up and be like, this is insane. It's not that no one did it, but not enough people did it, right? Stere up and was like, this is insane and quasi-racist. But now we have to stand up and say like, now that the players finally kind of took control, now we have to stand up and say it.

Now's the time it's incumbent about somebody's got to say something. Yeah. I know. And I'm not saying he's implying that, but it just feels weird that now's the time that the media must stand up to the, and talk about what's really going on the NBA, because it just didn't happen in the other era. And it was worse, you know. Well, I think you're right.

And I think that's why it's a, I mean, I said it's a question without an answer because I think that we should acknowledge that. I mean, I think it's fair to acknowledge that it's, you know, it unsettles the league and it's, and it's, you know, just sort of mind boggling in any number of ways. But there's not a solution that's implicit in that, right? I mean, it's like the, like, again, we keep going back to the journalism aspect of it, but like, really the only, you're not, I struggle to find, I struggle to imagine a mechanism that would prohibit, you know, Kevin Durant's agent from having a drink with the Nick's general manager and having this sort of come up offhandedly, you know, last summer. So really, the only, I mean, the only solution is for journalists to not write about it. And I know I was the one making the case for the three second rule. But, I mean, honestly, it's, it's either you kind of cover it or you don't. I think that that, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that's it. Can we have like a five-minute discussion about Jeff Bezos?

Yeah, absolutely. I don't have a ton to say about this, but I feel this is our zone. We should say something about this. If you weren't following Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, wrote in a medium post last week that he was made an offer. I couldn't refuse, quote unquote. That offer was from AMI, which owns the National Enquirer. And the offer specifically was that AMI would sit on text messages relating to Bezos's affair with Lauren Sanchez, including one text that showed his quote,

semi-erect manhood and another text that showed his, quote, top of his pubic region. And what AMI wanted was for Bezos to release a statement affirming that his parties, quote, have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI's coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces. This is referring to a number of things,

but including the mysterious production of an AMI 90-page glossy magazine about Saudi press, Mohamed Min. Salman before the prince's visit to the United States. Quick thoughts. One, as has been said many times on Twitter, too many, too many citations for the for the trailing footnotes here. Isn't this a one-off because Jeff Bezos is really rich and can hire good lawyers and spokesmen and all that other stuff?

And two, isn't it also a one-off because this this solution to the blackmail, the alleged blackmail from AMI requires you to admit a lot of really embarrassing. stuff in public. Yes. Or photos to get out that maybe most people wouldn't feel comfortable

with admitting in public and good for him for standing up to this. But it's only going to work, right, if you're willing to be like, okay, here are some incredibly

embarrassing things about me that I'm willing to let these guys print. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think that, you know,

if it's easy to, it's easy to side with Jeff Beez here and I find myself doing so. But really, this is just more, I mean, the lesson here is this is the power of a, you know, plutocracy or whatever.

I mean, he's not, this is not a guy who's running for office. It's not a guy who's particularly subject to a board in his company. I mean, he's the richest man alive. And you, and it wouldn't matter if they published all this stuff to him. It would not, it would not probably change his life to any great degree. And so he

has the power to stand up. And he has, he has the power to do, he has, he has the, he has the, yeah the power to do the right thing in this case and a lot of other people in his situation wouldn't have that um but yeah it's a this is it's a it's a it's a very it's a very very weird story and i've watched it unfold i just don't understand i still can't quite wrap my mind around what the inquirer was doing by saying i mean sending all these emails through formal channels and the whole thing was just very bizarre mm-hmm let's do the notebook dump because I have a couple of things I want to get to you. I have what might be

the worst sports politics tweet in human history. Wow. Okay. So Matt Weiser, political report at the Washington Post. Did you see a lot of the Democratic women were wearing white to the state of the union last week? Yes. Uh-huh. An attempt to make a statement, including Nancy Pelosi. Weiser writes, the women all in white is a pretty potent image evoking the suffrage movement and reminiscent of whiteout games in sports where the home team attempts to convey a unified message, this is our house,

and then has a picture of Penn State football fans all wearing white. Wow. I don't think that's the right metaphor. I don't think that's the right sports metaphor. I think that might be too many words for a tweet. There's also that. So your problem is tweet just a little wordy?

No, I just think once you're onto the third clause of a sentence, you're going to get in over your head. You know, you're going to get out ahead of your feet or whatever. I mean, there's, there's, you're going to, it's a problem. I don't think it's like when sport teams randomly and kind of disturbingly tell all their fans to wear white. I just don't, I don't think that's exactly what it is. Also from the State of the Union, you saw David, this was via a headline in L that said, Nancy Pelosi's iconic pity clap will sustain me for days.

What, what bot wrote that headline? Incredible, right? Oh, my God. We should get like a blue ribbon for SEO there. That's fantastic. On Twitter, Matt Boers notes that Pelosi said after the speech, she didn't mean the clap sarcastically, but was actually generally applauding one of Trump's policies at the speech. So so much for that. And back to canonizing Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Sorry. If you were, if you take a 10 minute break from notorious RBG content, please get back to work. We had yet another weird thing from Stephen A. Smith. This was, he said, of Dwayne Havis. Askins, the Ohio State quarterback, that he is more, quote, more of a runner than a thrower. And as MMQB's Robert Klimko pointed out, his rushing stats last year were 79 carries for 108 yards. So he had 1.4 yards of carry. I saw some, I saw some headline about this.

Maybe he was awful now. I can't remember where it was. People saying Stephen A. Smith, is Stephen A. Smith done so many. of these mess ups that he is sacrificing his ability to talk about the NFL. It has this happens when he talks about football, right? He probably wouldn't make this kind of mistake about the NBA. I have a different take, which is, I think, to borrow a phrase from Jack Schaefer, there's kind of strange new respect for Stephen A. Smith in the world right now.

And he has kind of triumphed over whatever queasiness people have about the opinionator industry, opinionist industry, like nobody else. They don't feel this about way about, you know, Bayless in the same way. They don't feel this way about him. Kellerman, any of these guys. He somehow can just play through. And it's fine. It's totally fine.

And I just don't, I think people, I think Stephen A just has kind of won in a way. And I didn't, I don't know how it happened. But, you know, I think that guy has just like, whether it's, he's been around so long or whether it's like people judge that of all the opinions he does, like he has the most highest rate of like, oh, this is a good idea. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that there's weirdly something less offensive about an utterly incorrect opinion than a bad opinion. You know, I mean, to see another talking head on ESPN just say something that you just think is sort of dumb or silly

or beside the point, that's what kind of, like, I can, you know, that's what will raise my hackles anyway. When someone just gets something wrong, it is just sort of hilarious, but that's all it is. It's just like, I mean, listen, Stephen A. Smith spends 23 and a half hours of the day on the air, you know? I mean, he's, he's gonna, he's gonna slip up at some point. He's got, he's got his first take. He's got his giant radio show. They have him on get up now. It seems like half the

time I turn it on, he's on the screen, whether or not he's teasing his show or not. I mean, they're just, he's doing basketball commentary. Obviously, this football, he's doing boxing stuff. I mean, it's just, he's all over the place. And, and, uh, I think that he's an easy target for a joke, but I think that, you know, I think that even, I think that everybody is aware that this is, this is, this is what happens when you're overextended. But we appreciate him as an entertainer, not as a, you know, not as a necessarily like expert mind on every single subject. So you're saying broken take is better than hot take. Broken take is definitely preferable to me. David Addon Vert got fired last week.

Oh, yeah. ESPN host. Andrew Marchand broke the story in the New York post. saying that apparently ESPN came to the conclusion that Verk had leave some some semi-embarrassing information about Major League, about ESPN's relationship with Major League Baseball to the site awful announcing. An investigation, a quick investigation followed, and he was sort of summarily fired. I got a couple thoughts about this. One is, I imagine that this only reached this level of crisis because it's,

information about an ESPN partner rather than information about ESPN itself. I just don't think you'd care that much about some of the stuff. The second thing is, I think it's fine for us all just to say ad nonverction have been fired. I don't want to play ESPN fantasy HR department where I go, you know what would have been right for him is like a two-week suspension. You know, that's what I was like, no, of course I don't think that. somebody who wants media personalities to talk to me, I don't think any suspension would be a good idea. Sure.

I think he should be allowed to talk. I think they should all be allowed to talk. I don't think any of them should be suspended. I just want to, to me, when we're thinking about this, like, Adnan, Verk made a mistake. I don't think he made a mistake. I don't think he did anything wrong. And it's not my responsibility to enforce ESPN HR policy. So just on the record, my opinion is no suspension for Ednon Verk, zero, nothing.

Get his job back. There you go. How about you? Yeah, I co-signed that. I mean, I think that there's matters of decorum and everything else. But at the end of the day, I think I'm, especially when, especially in this sort of subject matter, I'm just sort of a, you know, a truth nihilist. I mean, I don't think anything should, if you're saying something that is true, then that's, you know, especially in the context of reporting and journalism, like, it's hard to, it's hard to really ascribe too much fault. No, you know, I get it. If someone talks to you and they're just like, I know, we know you've been on the phone with this dude a lot, you know, you're getting a little bit too chummy with them, just like lay off for a while, you know, I mean, that's that's a conversation that, you know, employers can have with employees or, you know, managers can have with their reports and, and, you know, I understand if someone needs to take action.

But yeah, I mean, this does not seem like, I mean, this seems like you said, specifically about the MLB thing. It seems like somebody made a call that they wanted to see some sort of punishment take place. And, you know, it's all really unnecessary. That's the press box this week. David Shoemaker and I will be back with more heavily footnoted. And lukewarm takes about the media next week. Jim Cunningham's, the producer Chris Almeida, helps us the research.

David. See you next week, buddy. See you later, man. Who are you? Who are you, David? I'm just sort of a, you know, a truth nihilist. I mean, I don't think anything should do if you hear it. Why is it when we want to go somewhere? We're selfish, et cetera, right? That, again, that's the sort of thing that's, like, charming to hear from, like, an Esquire feature writer in the 50s, you know?

I mean, but it's not... That all becomes pagefuls. David and I went to high school together incidentally. Just a just a note. The whole thing was just very bizarre. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think that's right.

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