The Minneapolis Star-Tribune printed an erroneous (fabricated?) story this week that Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre had retired. Immediately, the Associated Press and ESPN ran with it as if it was fact.
Evidently the story started with an alleged (fabricated?) text that Favre had told a friend of a friend of a good friend of a not-so-good friend that he’d said to another friend, “I’m done.” To run with a story in an actual real mainstream media publication with that kind of tweet, or whatever, should be a firing offence if it turns out the story wasn’t true. It wasn’t. Nobody was fired and the mainstream media continues to be a source that is hard to believe.
Favre, as far as anyone knows, didn’t say a word to anyone about retirement, but all week the media blamed Favre for the story. They called him a “diva” again because that’s what they like to do and the Associated Press even ran three days of stories saying Visanthe Shiancoe verified that players had received texts from Favre. Sorry, I heard the Shiancoe interview on ESPN and his exact words were, “Some players told me had texted someone and said he retired, but I he hasn’t told me.” In other words, those players had been informed of the story that was written in the Star-Tribune.
All this (fabricated?) story proved was that the Twin Cities media is under such incredible pressure to get something definitive from Favre FIRST that it has completely lost its mind. Hey, Favre could retire. His ankle could be too bashed up to play. Then again, he could show up in two weeks, ready to play. We all know that. But to say he texted or tweeted somebody with the words, “I’m done,” and then without phoning Vikings head coach Brad Childress or owner Zygi Wilf or even Favre’s brother Scott, some donkey runs with a story and some lunatic editor lets it run, is frightening.
In the meantime, the Star-Tribune continues to run with the “he texted his teammates,” lie and they all continue to blame Favre and Shiancoe for the circus.
There would have been no circus at all if the original writer of the original bit of gerbalism had called Childress or Favre.
As we’ve said here before, you can’t have a dive without a large envoy of enablers ans let’s be certain the American mainstream media is Brett Favre’s enabler.
Listen to Scott Taylor 15 times daily on NCI FM 105.5 in Winnipeg and at Streetz 104.7 in Winnipeg.