Blaming the Media is one of our favorite pasttimes, right up there with whining about the other team's lack of class and Blaming the Umpires.  But sometimes, the media earns its bad reputation.  Like today.

I'm speaking of the team effort by John Shea and Susan Slusser in today's Chronicle.  Already discussed on this site deep down in the 220-comment "Here we go" diary and also the meat of the "Some players unhappy with Geren" diary, this was the Chronicle's response to the Oakland Tribune's  Carl Stewardtalks-to-Milton-Bradley piece from the previous day.

Now, Steward broke the big story here, but his conduct was far less reprehensible than that of his SF counterparts.  He caught up with an ex-Athletic who we hadn't heard from since his mysterious DFA.  That Milton continues being Milton is no surprise to anybody, but that's an argument for GMs not to sign him; not for reporters not to interview him.  He's a good player, and the more he hits .370, the more he's going to get interviewed..  Steward did the interview, and wrote it up.  If anything, he probably took too many pains to avoid offending Milt in the way he wrote it up.    Nevertheless ...

The really atrocious story was the one in the Chronicle, which as others here have noted had trying-to-keep-up-with-the-Stewards written all over it.  Which gets right to the root of the problem. A day late and with nothing to say, the Chron forged ahead, conducting its own idiotic interview of MB, which must have gone something like, "Uhh, could you just say to me on the phone what you just told Carl yesterday?".  And then, the Chron went to its off-the-record source inside the A's clubhouse to bury the on-field manager.  

When did it get those player comments?  Well, worst-case scenario, it got them yesterday after Steward's piece came out.  Worst-case because that reflects this mentality: "My competitor ran an article that made the A's look bad, so now I have to go and do the same thing.  I'm going to call some players now and go fishing for bad stuff about the manager."  Fishing for the type of quote you want as a reporter is bad enough, but fishing for trouble-making quotes is even worse.

So let's give Sluss-n-Shea the benefit of the doubt--the quotes were not the product of fishing, they came from earlier this season, and our would-be journalists just decided to use them now. Even then, the use of an off-the-record source here is highly questionable. Without anybody willing to cop to having said them, these complaints don't rise to the level of being newsworthy.  

The A's have no doubt been too secretive for too long.  At the same time, it's always seemed to me that Slusser has been complicit in that secrecy.  I'm no insider--all I know is that her writing has always sounded to me like the company line.  That the Chron decided to go the way it did today possibly reflects some acknowledgement of that ongoing inadequacy in its A's coverage.  

The result, however, was a disater--a bunch of sound and fury when none was really called for.  The Chron needed to run the pertinent quotes from the Trib piece in its own notes, and credit the Tribune in doing so.  "bla bla bla" MB told the Tribune, it would have said.  The placement in the notes on page 5 would have reflected the low credibility every reasonable person puts in whatever comes out of Bradley's mouth.  

Instead, we get the type of rumor-mongering that gives all reporters a bad name--the kind of crap that makes folks like Beane secretive and distrustful of the media in the first place.  Needless to say, we deserve better.