Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/109499
Upon Further Review todd D. burlage • Sports Illustrated reported that Kekua's well-publicized car crash that left her in a coma happened on April 28, 2012. A story on ESPN.com mentioned a crash that happened three months earlier, sometime in January. • As far as the reported dates of Kekua's death, those ranged from Sept. 11 to Sept. 15, with at least one published reference for each of those five days. • Kekua's funeral? Depending on where the news came from, that either happened in the non-existent city of Carson City, Calif., or somewhere in Hawaii. The point is, each and every one of these facts could have been easily checked, and none were, including by this writer, who referenced Kekua in six different stories this season, based on a faulty herd mentality that if it's in print or on the Internet, it's gotta be true. Even Deadspin ended up looking foolish after laying out the 80 percent odds that Manti Te'o was involved in the planning and execution of this hoax — a confident assertion that turned out to be 100 percent inaccurate. Te'o clearly played into all the attention after the tragic death of his "girlfriend," and he embellished the situation to his advantage. But with the media lifting Te'o to super hero status for more than three months, the situation in many ways reached the point of no return for the face of Notre Dame football, especially as his team was preparing for a National Championship game. Mistakes happen in writing and editing. And the honest ones are forgivable, while the lazy ones cut at the core of journalistic responsibility. And what's most troubling about the handling of the Te'o story was watching more shameful reporting being stacked on the same foundation of bad journalism that was first constructed when the news broke. Renowned writers from outlets all over the country were left to tap-dance around their failures in checking the basic story facts, but not before converging on campus to find anyone who had anything bad to say about Te'o. "You couldn't pick a guy with a bigger profile than him," ESPN field producer Chris Benjamin said last month in an interview from campus, obviously brought to town by the smell of fresh blood, and a potential ratings spike from one young man's embarrassment. Call Te'o a tale-teller, a headlinehunter, or too naïve to ever survive in this cruel world. But for all of us who reached any conclusions along the way based on unconfirmed media reports and Internet speculation — and then demanded a public statement from Te'o afterward — shame on us. The fact is, Te'o owed nobody an interview or explanation — except the folks closest to him, and perhaps some prospective NFL employers — and never to a media mob that already had its story written, and wasn't going to believe a word he said anyway. ✦ Todd D. Burlage has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 2005. He can be reached at tburlage@blueandgold.com