Ground-Breaking Coverage Is Sometimes Suspect : The Rose Affair: Testing New Territory

Press coverage of charges that Pete Rose has gambled while managing the Cincinnati Reds has provided a good case study of the new priorities, attitudes and limitations in contemporary sports journalism.

The New York Times and Sports Illustrated broke the first stories on Rose, but much of the early ground-breaking work thereafter was done by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Dayton Daily News, Cincinnati Post and Cincinnati Enquirer--a striking change from the days when local papers generally went easy on the hometown hero.

Most of the Plain Dealer coverage has been provided by their news reporter based in Cincinnati; the other papers have used both news and sports reporters in varying degrees.

Not all the work on Rose in the Ohio press has been exemplary, though.

George Blake, editor of the Enquirer, complains that his competitors have relied too often on unnamed sources--sources who have sometimes been wrong (as when the Dayton Daily News reported March 23 that Rose was “likely to be suspended for at least a year” by the baseball commissioner in a decision that would “probably” be announced that day).

More than 12 weeks later, the commissioner’s office has still not announced a decision on Rose, and no decision is expected until Sunday at the earliest.

“We have not . . . run a single anonymous source,” Blake says. “To some extent, that has put us behind the story. . . . (But) I’m less concerned with being first than with being right.”

But the Enquirer has published at least two stories based in part on unnamed sources, attributing those stories to the newspapers that first ran them--a not-uncommon tactic in journalism.

Slip-ups in coverage of the Rose story have not been limited to Ohio. The Washington Post also published a story saying Rose probably would be suspended March 23, and the Boston Globe printed a story, attributed to “a source in the commissioner’s office,” that said, “You wouldn’t believe the stuff they’re finding out about this guy (Rose). It’s just scum. . . . “

As the Globe’s own ombudsman subsequently wrote, “It’s against Globe policy to vilify someone through an anonymous source.”

Sports Illustrated also quoted anonymous sources on information damaging to Rose, even publishing hearsay in at least one instance. SI attributed to an unidentified weightlifter the accusation that someone had placed bets on baseball games for Rose. “He never said he was doing it for Pete,” the source said. “But that’s what the talk was around the gym.”

Most newspaper editors would not permit such an anonymous, pejorative and speculative comment to appear in their news columns. But sportswriters have traditionally enjoyed more latitude--and less stringent journalistic standards--than news reporters, and investigative reporting in sports is still in its infancy.