Rightly or wrongly, a lot of the criticism of the A-Rod book can probably be attributed to the columns Selena Roberts wrote for The New York Times when Duke lacrosse players were accused of rape in 2006. Charges were later dropped, but not before the three accused young men had been named in the national media in several articles. Roberts, perhaps more than most, criticized the players and the sports-playing culture to which they belonged. Also, probably in part because of the big platform the Times gave her, she has since been criticized more than most for her coverage. The criticism extends to her book about A-Rod, as Elizabeth mentioned in her earlier post.
A former colleague pointed me to the best case I’ve seen made for doubting the veracity of some points made in the Roberts’s coverage of A-Rod: here’s Jason Whitlock’s column for the Kansas City Star.
Proven inaccurate, Roberts never wrote a retraction for the columns that contributed to the public lynching of Reade Seligmann, Colin Finnerty and David Evans.
Instead, she moved on to Sports Illustrated, a seat on ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters” and a new target, baseball slugger Alex Rodriguez. . . . .
Roberts’ book is a long-winded blog. Why it’s being treated as an unimpeachable piece of journalism can only be explained by the cushy position she’s been handed by The New York Times, ESPN and Sports Illustrated and the unchallenged institutional bias found within the elite sports media institutions.
