Link: Bondy on Jets Coin Flip Article
Last week I tried to address the false article that the Jets posted on their website, while knowing that the coin flip had already taken place. While it’s March and many fans won’t notice (or care) I thought it was a reprehensible move by the team — it’s reminiscent of holding up David Findel and his $400,000 PSL purchase as one of a model fan — one of those trust-breaking moves towards a team’s fanbase. It seems that Daily News Columnist Filip Bondy agrees.
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.
I love the Jets. I live and die with this team but maybe my standards are too high? It just seems like the known manipulation of a devoted and at times (because hey, we ARE fans) blindly loyal fanbase is a cheap shot. However the article was intended, it comes off as a deliberate taking advantage of customers.
The New York Jets have some excellen writers in-house in Randy Lange, Eric Allen, and others, and it pains me to think solely by association that they’re the casualties in this incident. While I think we all know that news about a team from the team’s own website won’t be the most objective, there’s at least a trust that the team isn’t putting forth known specious articles.
3 Responses to Link: Bondy on Jets Coin Flip Article
-
Dave TN says:
I agree completely.
-
bernie says:
I don’t think it should be a surprise to anyone who has watched what Woody has done as owner of this team. He has been in over his head since day one. The man is a class act in his philanthropic endeavors, no question about that. But there is no way he should ever have been given a football team.
Let it go man, let it go, LOL….