FanHouse

Hours before the official Mitchell Report was released yesterday, a list started floating around the internet that claimed to have every player named in the report. This thing spread like wildfire over email, eventually landing in the FanHouse tip-line. Fortunately, we decided to sit tight until the official list came out, since as it happens the list was completely wrong in regards to some notable players. Unfortunately, not every media outlet showed our restraint -- including KTVI, a television station in St. Louis.

The news directors of KTVI were clearly motivated by the fact that this list falsely implicated local legend Albert Pujols. Granted, the news anchors were careful to frame the news with all the proper disclaimers -- "allegedly" this, "reportedly" that -- to cover their behinds, but as Dan Caesar of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch explains, simply dedicating a couple of hours of coverage to false allegations is harmful enough. Unfortunately, though, this is the wave of the future, says KTVI news director Kingsley Smith:

"You can take the safe route, one that is noncombative and not aggressive," he said. "But in today's environment, I'm not sure we have the luxury to do that. And the Fox (network) brand allows us a little more latitude. There's a certain sense of edginess and aggressiveness.

"Days like this are fun because it forces you as a journalist, and a manager, to make decisions that aren't easy. If you want to have your button-up newscast packaged with a bow, there are stations in town that do it and have been doing it for 25 years. But their ratings are going down; ours are going up. There was a time and place when stations would have been reluctant to put something on the air'' like this. "But with the Internet, sports-talk radio and cable, viewers are better served getting more voices giving context. That's what we try to provide.''

Welcome to the new age of journalism, where dragging a man's name through the mud is "fun," and perfectly acceptable so long as you're an affiliate of Fox and/or bringing in the ratings. Or something like that. Ugh.

Read FanHouse's full coverage of the Mitchell Report.
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