But he never said he was her. He used her picture, which is like lying and saying he looked like her. The hoax would have been the same without the pictures - minus some credibility, maybe. But he didn’t use her name, any details of her life, or anything else. He made up everything else. He did violate this girl’s privacy by including her in this crazy scam, but he didn’t impersonate her in that sense.
Here’s the comparative law in Texas, it of course doesn’t mean anything in California, but it’s much clearer (or maybe just broader). Penal Code 37.07: (bolding mine)
I’m actually overly curious and will ask around.
On an related note, I’ve noticed Jon Stewart has only been making fun of the hoaxer the last 3 days - hasn’t mentioned Te’o at all. That’s integrity or at least focusing on the person that should be made fun of (if anyone).
Has this thing come full circle yet? Is every possible bizarre twist out in the open now? At the end of the day, I think Manti comes out looking Ok. Naive and gullible, yes, but he didn’t really do anything wrong. And that is quite a change in the story from the original deadspin article that accused Manti of creating the fake girlfriend from whole cloth.
When Manti and the girl in the picture start dating in real life, it will have come full circle.
If you read the original Deadspin article, it states something like, a (ie, one) phone call placed to Manti was not answered. A phone call to Manti’s Dad said he was in a meeting that would last another hour, ect. This occurred the same day the article came out. So, Deadspin had their story and that’s all they wanted. These are the journalists many people rushed to believe. They made the first impression.
ESPN was also working on breaking the hoax story, but they were waiting for an interview with Te’o. When you fall well below ESPN’s standards for journalist integrity, you live in a cold dark world…
Yes, it’s sort of become his Buttafuoco: every time something weird comes up in the news, he blames it on ‘Hawaiian prankster Ronaiah Tuiasosopo.’ Funny stuff.
Not quite, because Tuiasosopo family is now Ronaiah wasn’t on the phone - it was a female cousin. That’s almost too bad. For one thing it means Ronaiah is not a gifted actor, just a douche, and it means there are at least two jerks in this story. It brings back that question of “holy shit, how did she commit 500 hours to this?” I’m not going to say we’ve run out of bizarre twists until we get something like a week of no new revelations.
Not quite. It says says Manti’s his cell phone was not accepting calls, that Ronaiah didn’t respond to text messages and phone calls, that Brian Te’o said he was in a meeting and couldn’t talk (no duration was given for the meeting), and Notre Dame did not respond to a voice message.
That could be, but it’s not necessarily the case.
They were right about basically everything. I don’t think a single fact they reported has been challenged. The only thing Deadspin got wrong was the implication (not stated as a fact) that Te’o was in on the hoax. And it’s taken people days to work that out.
News happens fast. It’s obvious they spent a significant amount of time working this story. The fact that they didn’t stop working and wait for everyone to call them back doesn’t speak poorly for them. The longer they waited, the greater the chance that either someone else scoops them or Notre Dame and Te’o announce it on their own, which basically kills their story.
The guy sucks on TV, but nowhere does he say he doesn’t believe his own story.
That’s not an integrity issue. It’s ESPN doing what ESPN does: for one thing, using its greater resources and access, and for another, presenting the story in a way that might be more favorable for a well-known player.
Deadspin’s first tip came on Jan 11 (a day after the Te’o camp tipped ESPN). Deadspin released the story on Jan 16. Five days.
The story is a great story to break and they got a lot accomplished in 5 days, but they just had to heavily imply Te’o was in on it with little or no effort to confirm or deny. I’m not saying the have to talk with Te’o, but they made little to no effort. And they decided not to include a source they had that said Te’o was not involved. They only went with the friend of a friend source that said he was 80% sure Te’o was complicit in the hoax because you know, how could Te’o not know (and they even butchered and edited the quote to make it seem like he really meant he was 80% sure). That was the only shred of evidence they had for implicating Te’o.
That’s not just reporting a story, that’s making up stuff - which the CNN interview exposes (to me).
re: ESPN. They won’t make the same mistake twice. I don’t think they have integrity, that was a joke. Their reporting wasn’t the worst I’ve seen from them, though. But they scrolled the “80% sure” quote for days.
Which makes almost no sense. Unless there’s very specific information out, you can only be 50%, 99% or 100% sure of something like this. How the hell can someone come up 80%?
Ok. Are you saying that’s not a reasonable amount of time to work on this story?
Their efforts to get comment were appropriate. The implication that Te’o was in on this wasn’t appropriate, but it was something that deserved to be looked into and it took days before people were satisfied. Here’s what Deadspin did before they published their story: they called Te’o, they called his father, they called the hoaxer, and they called Notre Dame. None of them responded. All of these people were aware of the hoax and (other than Tuiasosopo) they had told other people - even news outlets - about this story and would have known why Deadspin was calling. So they had time to prepare and respond. And when they did respond, it was added to the Deadspin story. That’s one of the nice things about publishing on the web instead of a newspaper. The debate here seems to be whether or not they could have given these people more time to respond. It’s possible they could have done that, but it’s not a major sin.
Two people actually said they thought Te’o was involved. And I agree that they didn’t have any real evidence to support that. They probably should have left it out of the story.
No, it’s not making stuff up. They did report something without a strong basis, but they had it from two people who actually knew the parties involved, which you and I (and Deadspin) don’t. And of course we’re looking back on this based on another week of reporting and have acknowledged the fact that Te’o did play his own role in perpetuating the hoax even though he did not concoct it himself.
I think you’re reading a lot into a guy spluttering.
It wasn’t a mistake, and it has nothing to do with integrity. It’s about two things: the fact that Deadspin did extensive reporting on this story and ESPN didn’t, and that Deadspin is a website and ESPN is a multimedia empire that wants to stay on the good side of famous schools and athletes. Deadspin did a story on the hoax; ESPN wanted to do a story about Te’o and give him time to get his ducks in a row.
It’s a good story. They got a lot right. They just took it too far. At the end they go into lala land without any facts. They wanted the Te’o is complicit story, they didn’t have it, but didn’t want to find out whether it was true or not. The info they had on Jan 16, was nothing and/or conflicting re: whether Te’o was involved.
From Deadspin writer: “When we are trying to gauge where in the situation responsibility lies, we are going to ask the people closest to the situation,” Burke said. “We reported what they told us. Whether or not Te’o is involved does not matter to me - it’s not of interest.” But of course the story implies that he was involved. That ain’t investigative journalism.
They both did reporting. They both knew about the hoax. ESPN just also wanted to interview Te’o, because, you know, he’s a big part of the story. I said it’s a mistake because ESPN said it was: NY Times
You can’t say they didn’t want to know when they obviously asked two people who knew Te’o or Tuiasosopo. I think they didn’t have sufficient evidence to make the implication they made and we don’t disagree about that. But they didn’t come up with it on their own. It’s not fair to say they made it up. They made too much of it.
I think the key phrase there is “to me.” Meaning he doesn’t care personally whether Te’o was involved. Two people told him they felt he probably was. They were wrong, but that wasn’t as obvious at the time.
Not really. When Deadspin broke the story, ESPN mostly credited Deadspin. They did, I guess, have some comments from Notre Dame players ready to go. If ESPN had a story ready to go, they could have run it.
Yes, they did. But knowing about it and doing the reporting are two different things. The NYT story says Te’o’s people approached ESPN about the hoax on January 10th. ESPN didn’t report anything that day and apparently they agreed not to publish anything for at least a week because they wanted an on-camera interview with Te’o. Deadspin had no such agreement, did their jobs, and scooped ESPN.
No, that’s wrong. Deadspin tried to interview Te’o and he didn’t get in touch with them. That’s not their fault. I think you’re misunderstanding what ESPN did here: they held off on breaking the story because they wanted a sit-down interview with Te’o at his convenience, which would have more or less allowed them to monopolize the story. They failed because it took too long and Deadspin was reporting the story, too. ESPN wanted to interview him on camera because they wanted to stay on the right side of Te’o and Notre Dame and they wanted everyone who followed up on the story to use ESPN’s interview footage. So they scheduled and interview and waited and Deadspin went to work. ESPN did not hold off on reporting the story because they didn’t have a comment from Te’o; they could have gotten that easily. They wanted to get a video interview and work up a big presentation based on that.
I don’t mean to get all nitpicky here, but I get annoyed when people describe this kind of thing as a mistake. It was intentional. ESPN made a decision based on their own priorities and handled it exactly the way they wanted to handle it. They just didn’t know someone else was on the story and wasn’t sitting around waiting for Manti Te’o. As the Times story says, ESPN is a TV network and decided to wait so they could get TV footage they could have plastered all over SportCenter’s Sunday Conversation or something, and Deadspin just broke the story.
It does not matter that Te’o might be gay. The bigger issue is that he is going to be a bust in the NFL. He fed off the weaker teams but as we saw in the BCS Title game, he was pushed all over the field.
He is small by LB standards
He is of average speed as we will see at the combine
He is of average strength as we will see at the combine
He is NO Junior Seau and his ceiling is more akin to a A.J. Hawk and I see him out of the league in less than 5 years.
Right, they did go too far. But when we’re talking about the journalistic practices here I do have to emphasize that Deadspin didn’t fail to do anything and ESPN was not more ethical or more thorough than Deadspin. They just wanted a video interview, and they got scooped because they were overly accommodating of Te’o.
I understand the math. My point is that the person was stating that he was 80% certain that Te’o was complicit in the hoax. Under what circumstances could he be 80% certain of something like that?