Jets use their Web site to spread misinformation on NFL's coin flip

[Bruce Banner]

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/jets/2010/03/20/2010-03-20_jet_site_is_scene_of_the_slime.html?r=sports%2Ffootball&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nydnrss%2Fsports%2Ffootball+%28Sports%2FFootball%29

As we zoom along in the internet age, sports fans need to become warier about their sources of information. Not all news is valid news. If they required reminding of that, they got it last week when the Jets reportedly faked a leak on their Web site to advance their own agenda.

The team posted a story on NewYorkJets.com stating there would be a coin flip, perhaps in public, to decide whether the Giants or Jets opened the new stadium. Sources told our Gary Myers, however, the NFL previously had informed the Jets they had lost a privately-held coin toss. The Jets were basically campaigning for a do-over on their Web site, with misinformation.

The Jets surely were right about the coin flip issue. The toss should have been held in public. But the NFL is addicted to exactly this sort of paranoid privacy, and the Jets have contributed to that culture for years whenever they have limited media access to players and coaches. There's nothing new there.

The groundbreaking precedent in this instance was a team using its Web site to knowingly disseminate false news. Reporters, including this one, make mistakes all the time. And we have all become familiar with the use of spin, when it comes to manipulating statistics to prove a point.

The Jets' affair, however, is different. If this was not simply a matter of bad communication between team departments, then it is something far worse: false propaganda, possibly emanating from Jets owner Woody Johnson himself, and a breach of trust with the club's famously loyal fans.

Every team in every league in this country now runs its own Web site, and is using it more often to break news, or offer statements by club officials who don't wish to be interviewed elsewhere. Bad news is most painlessly dispensed in dribbles, on weekends, and so it is no longer uncommon to read for the first time on a team Web site about a season-ending diagnosis for a star player.

In this case, the news was so abhorrent to the Jets, that the Jets changed the news.

When they click on these Web sites, fans need to understand they may not be getting the whole story. In some cases, apparently, they may even be getting the wrong story on purpose.

[Bleedin Green]

This is certainly much more plausible than the possibility that the story was written and approved prior to the Jets being informed of any result of the coin toss.

Even if the Jets were informed before the story was published, is it that inconceivable that the Jets' website administrator wasn't the first guy Woody Johnson came running to with this news? The Jets (namely Woody) certainly had more than enough direct, public criticism of this situation that it seems a bit far-fetched that they would even bother going through that kind of trouble.

[harts724]

[Thai Jet]

I think every Jets fan here KNEW we would NEVER win that coin toss.

[Maxman]

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/jets/2010/03/20/2010-03-20_jet_site_is_scene_of_the_slime.html?r=sports%2Ffootball&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nydnrss%2Fsports%2Ffootball+%28Sports%2FFootball%29

As we zoom along in the internet age, sports fans need to become warier about their sources of information. Not all news is valid news. If they required reminding of that, they got it last week when the Jets reportedly faked a leak on their Web site to advance their own agenda.

The team posted a story on NewYorkJets.com stating there would be a coin flip, perhaps in public, to decide whether the Giants or Jets opened the new stadium. Sources told our Gary Myers, however, the NFL previously had informed the Jets they had lost a privately-held coin toss. The Jets were basically campaigning for a do-over on their Web site, with misinformation.

The Jets surely were right about the coin flip issue. The toss should have been held in public. But the NFL is addicted to exactly this sort of paranoid privacy, and the Jets have contributed to that culture for years whenever they have limited media access to players and coaches. There's nothing new there.

The groundbreaking precedent in this instance was a team using its Web site to knowingly disseminate false news. Reporters, including this one, make mistakes all the time. And we have all become familiar with the use of spin, when it comes to manipulating statistics to prove a point.

The Jets' affair, however, is different. If this was not simply a matter of bad communication between team departments, then it is something far worse: false propaganda, possibly emanating from Jets owner Woody Johnson himself, and a breach of trust with the club's famously loyal fans.

Every team in every league in this country now runs its own Web site, and is using it more often to break news, or offer statements by club officials who don't wish to be interviewed elsewhere. Bad news is most painlessly dispensed in dribbles, on weekends, and so it is no longer uncommon to read for the first time on a team Web site about a season-ending diagnosis for a star player.

In this case, the news was so abhorrent to the Jets, that the Jets changed the news.

When they click on these Web sites, fans need to understand they may not be getting the whole story. In some cases, apparently, they may even be getting the wrong story on purpose.

The funny thing is Flip Bondy seems a bit annoyed that the teams can report their own news now and need publications like the NY Daily News a lot less. That is what I took from it but I might be off base a bit.

Anyhow looks like the Jets should have deleted the coin toss article and not the Woody is great piece.