Bill C wrote:
> Max wrote:
>
>> Old news for most of you, but it might interest some.
>>
>> http://www.latimes.com/sports/cycli...9,0,7810733,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines
>>
>
> That's a hatchet piece of ********. Looks like Lance is going to go
> ater the LA Times, and considering their record of honest practices,
> I'm betting Lance wins another settlement.
> I hope he holds their feet to the fire. The Times syndicate, and
> especially the LA version are the descendants of Hearst and embrace the
> "yellow" heritage.
> Bill C
>
>
Bill,
The Hearst paper in LA was the Herald-Examiner, not the LA Times. It
was formed in 1962 from the morning Herald-Express and the afternoon
Examiner, both Hearst papers. It ceased publication in 1989. The Los
Angeles Times was started in 1881, went broke, was taken over by its
publisher, the Mirror Co., then was bought by Harrison Otis in 1884.
The descendants of Mr. Otis, the Chandlers, controlled the paper until
1985, when an editor was given day-to-day control. In 2000, it was
purchased by the Tribune Co. of Chicago.
=====
I thought the article was questionable myself. All it could report was
that Lance Armstrong was paid the $5 million plus interest and
attorney's fees by the company that tried to withhold the payment for
winning #6, and a bunch of already often reported accusations.
Nowhere did they even "wonder" about the ethics of the way the testing
organization, the UCI, the WADA, the newspaper Le Monde and its
reporter(s), and others subverted a research project to come up with
Lance Armstrong's name as an EPO user. (As best I can recall, the
testing lab had to get an OK from the riders to test their "B" samples
five years later. The riders were assured that no one would ever know
whose sample was whose. And, of course, since there were no longer any
"A" samples, there could never be a valid finding of violations that
would result in penalties.)
Nor did they detail how the LA Times came into possession to information
from the "confidential" arbitration between SCA Productions and Lance
Armstrong, or examine whether it was ethical to report what they
learned, since it was disclosed in an unethical, if not illegal, manner.
Similar chicanery in the French affair apparently didn't bother the LA
Times, either.
Nor does anyone "wonder" whether it is likely that Lance would be
talking to his doctor(s) about his treatment and history while there
were strangers in his hospital room.
Nor does anyone "wonder" why Betsy and Frankie Andreu would reveal what
they supposedly heard, and whether there is any reason to question their
motives or veracity. Much was made of the fact that the two gave signed
affadavits or gave "sworn testimony" as to these "facts", although the
story says the record is full of "conflicting testimony, hearsay, and
circumstantial evidence admissable in arbitration hearings but
questionable in more formal legal proceedings".
I took the LA Times article to be an admission that there is STILL no
evidence that Lance Armstrong has used performance enhancing methods
that are prohibited by the UCI, but that they feel there is a lot of
smoke, and even if there is no fire, an article about the subject would
help sell newspapers.
Usually, the LA Times does useful investigations. They pulled the
Nevada judiciary out of the shadows so far that the state is likely to
have to do something about conditions there. They revealed the
scandalous way in which California courts were granting "emergency"
conservatorships over the affairs of the elderly to "for profit"
entities, and how those entities were bilking the elderly of their
assets. This "investigation" seems just as worthy of its own ethics
investigation as it does of looking at Lance Armstrong. (The LA Times
hasn't been nearly this hard on track sprinter Marion Jones, for example.)