TOMASE EXPLAINS HIS ERROR
Posted by Mike Florio on May 16, 2008, 12:55 a.m.
Reporter John Tomase of the Boston Herald has posted a lengthy, detailed explanation of the events leading to that fateful February 2 story claiming that the Patriots had taped the Rams’ walk-through practice prior to Super Bowl XXXVI.
The entire article is right here.
Though we’re trying to give Tomase the benefit of the doubt on this one (something he didn’t give to the Patriots at the time he wrote the story), Tomase’s version of the events comes off as a second-by-second description of a train wreck. In the end, the train still wrecked; all that his story adds to it is the first-hand account of the screeching brakes and the flying glass.
And the engineer with his cranium buried in his caboose.
We can’t help but think that this is all part of a broader, and carefully calculated, P.R. effort aimed at ensuring that Tomase keeps his beat, and that various editors at the Herald keep their jobs.
After all, Tomase’s sharing of details provides a human context to the story of the story, and we think that someone in upper management at the Herald concluded that this would be a prudent way to generate sympathy for Tomase, in the hopes that everyone can move forward as if this never happened.
But we don’t think that can happen. There are too many flaws in the explanation. For example, the original apology implies that Tomase had multiple sources for the story, but Tomase now concedes that the article cited only one source, but then tries to explain that there were in fact more than one: “The story mentioned only a single, unnamed source because in the end,” Tomase writes, “while I had multiple sources relating similar allegations, I relied on one more than the others.”
Other intriguing aspects of Tomase’s explanation include an acknowledgement that the league’s investigation of the situation revealed that there was no power to the cameras. Also, Tomase claims that, when he asked Commissioner Roger Goodell about the rumors of the videotaped walk-through following the “State of the League” address on February 1, Goodell said that it was the first he’d heard of it. After the Herald story was published, Goodell explained that the league previously had investigated the matter and had concluded that the practice had not been videotaped.
Though Tomase refuses to disclose his source or to claim that his source lied to him, the circumstantial evidence continues to point to Walsh.
Think of it this way. We know for a fact that, at one point, Walsh was squawking like a parrot on speed, on an off-the-record basis. So why didn’t Tomase simply ask Walsh for a comment, on or off the record, as to whether the walk-through had been taped? If Walsh would have said to Tomase on an off-the-record basis what Walsh told Goodell face-to-face three days ago, Tomase would have had everything he needed to pull the plug on the story.
In other words, if Walsh’s recent claim that he didn’t tape the walk-through was enough to get the Herald to retract the story, shouldn’t a similar statement from Walsh have been enough to kill it?
This leads to only three possible explanations, as we see it: (1) Tomase didn’t bother to try to contact Walsh before running the story; (2) Tomase contacted Walsh, and Walsh refused to talk about it at all (which would have made no sense if he merely would have been saying was “I didn’t tape the walk-through”); or (3) Walsh was the source.
We believe, based on everything we’ve read and heard, that Walsh was the source. And, if that’s the case, we’d love to know why Walsh told Tomase one thing in February, and the Commissioner something else in May.
