Every once in awhile something that happens in sports can teach you something about news. In this case, it is the murder of Redskins player Sean Taylor.
I was watching ESPN's "The Sports Reporters" on Sunday morning, as I usually do before going into my weekly NFL coma. Mitch Albom raised an excellent point. News people are simply too quick to speculate, and often do so without any hard facts.
This was the case in the Taylor incident. Was this a robbery gone bad? Was Taylor a victim of his upbringing, someone who couldn't leave the bad neighborhood behind? Was he a great guy who should have installed a security system in his home?
It seemed every TV host and columnist had an opinion, and hardly any of them knew the man personally.
Being right vs. being first? That argument is dead. Now all you need is an opinion. Facts are not necessary to take viewers into the spin cycle.
Albom went on to say that sometimes we need to let the story just play out, and used the Duke rape case as an example.
So think before you make any kind of assumption, then don't do it. Just present the facts you have, and let the viewers come up with their own theories. If you form an opinion, and it turns out to be very wrong, you're the one who ends up looking bad. Remember, we're supposed to be objective in this business. That seems to have gotten lost along the way.
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