Times the sports media lied for a hot story

[tarheelhockey]

We should all keep in mind that members of the media are often toyed with by executives with agendas.

Case in point: Jack Adams.

When he dumped Lindsay because of his union activities, he also showed the beat reporters a fake contract that indicated Terrible Ted earned $25K per year instead of $13K. Even after Lindsay was gone to Chicago, Adams continued his press attack, spreading rumours that Lindsay had criticized his Detroit teammates.

All of this (and much more) is fully documented and was even dramatized in Net Worth.


Years ago, I had a boss who would feed rumours into the workplace grapevine. Then he’d sit back and take notes, the evil SOB.

Adams wasn’t a whole lot different — he loved to create pointless drama and use the beholden press in ways that truly harmed good people. Lindsay, Hall, Kelly and many others were victimized by a press corps Adams used like puppets.

A more recent example of this is Jim Rutherford, who routinely negotiates contracts and trades through the media.

 

[FerrisRox]

For obvious reasons, I cannot get into specifics, but there is one prominent player agent who is quite masterful at using the media for his clients.

He had a few particular stooges in the media he would use, and it was well known enough that the members of the media were quite aware, when these guys reported "rumours" where this information was coming from.

Sometimes he would make up things like "the Edmonton Oilers have received multiple offers for player X, but so far General Manager Ken Holland has refused to pull the trigger" with the hopes that these planted stories would turn up the pressure from fans and other media to get a client moved out of a bad situation or to simply signal to other teams that a certain player was available and get them on their radar.

Sometimes these things seemed to be done simply to gauge the fan bases reaction to a possible trade - are they eager for a rebuild, are they reluctant, do they want to pull the plug on a season, etc.

This same agent was also very active in getting numbers out to the media when clients were free agents. They "rumour" of what they are looking for and reports of what the team is offering (sometimes very dubious in nature) again in an effort to sway a fan bases opinion.

In most cases the "stooge" provides this service in exchange for some actual juicy (legitimate) rumours but one guy in particular, at a major outlet is a well known stooge for this agent (and a handful of others) and is notorious for not seeming to know when he's being used and played which has led to some very colorful exchanges behind the scenes.

 

[Hoser]

Darcy Tucker getting the same sort of accusations thrown at him as well as Sandy McCarthy back in 1998 for apparently using racial gestures towards Peter Worrell, which even Worrell denied happen.

LOL, been a long time since I've seen mention of this ridiculous 'incident', I almost forgot it 'happened'.

I remember when word of it started spreading, and my first thought was "Why are these idiots running this obviously BS story? Sandy McCarthy's father is black!"

 

[Big Phil]

We should all keep in mind that members of the media are often toyed with by executives with agendas.

Case in point: Jack Adams.

When he dumped Lindsay because of his union activities, he also showed the beat reporters a fake contract that indicated Terrible Ted earned $25K per year instead of $13K. Even after Lindsay was gone to Chicago, Adams continued his press attack, spreading rumours that Lindsay had criticized his Detroit teammates.

All of this (and much more) is fully documented and was even dramatized in Net Worth.


Years ago, I had a boss who would feed rumours into the workplace grapevine. Then he’d sit back and take notes, the evil SOB.

Adams wasn’t a whole lot different — he loved to create pointless drama and use the beholden press in ways that truly harmed good people. Lindsay, Hall, Kelly and many others were victimized by a press corps Adams used like puppets.

He was quite the evil genius. Or maybe not the genius part. He did trade away his dynasty players (Sawchuk, Lindsay) and along with Peter Pocklington is guilty of ending a dynasty abruptly instead of waiting for the core of the team to lose.

 

[Big Phil]

LOL, been a long time since I've seen mention of this ridiculous 'incident', I almost forgot it 'happened'.

I remember when word of it started spreading, and my first thought was "Why are these idiots running this obviously BS story? Sandy McCarthy's father is black!"

Tucker mentioned that he felt sick to his stomach over that story, couldn't sleep apparently. Something along those lines. He knew what he was doing and the worst part is even the ones reporting the whole "ape" gesture knew exactly what Tucker and McCarty meant..............but then again that would be boring and not "eye catching".