WNBC Falsely Accuses 14 Baseball Players Of Drug Use

In today’s edition of defamation and libel:

On Thursday morning, local affiliate WNBC got their hands on what they believed was an authentic copy of the list of ballplayer names from the Mitchell Report via Gawker Media sports blog Deadspin (*). Apart from breaking our goddamn news (and, yeah, it wasn’t surprising) that steroids and HGH are prevalent as hell in baseball c. 2008, the Mitchell Report had a very specific list of dopers’ names. But WNBC’s preliminary list didn’t match up to the official list, which was released several hours later.

Deadspin, to their credit and using internet smarts, noted that the list “could very likely be one of those Web urban legends that somehow got around, like when everyone thought Scott Baio was dead.” But WNBC went ahead and posted the list with no disclaimer and no hint that the authenticity of players’ names could be in doubt.

The Smoking Gun discovered this late Friday and that the following players were falsely named as drug users by WNBC:

Albert Pujols

Johnny Damon

Jason Varitek

Nomar Garciaparra

Ivan Rodriguez

Jeff Bagwell

Milton Bradley

Kerry Wood

Mark Prior

Trot Nixon

Mike Cameron

Brady Anderson

Albert Belle

Kyle Farnsworth

On WNBC’s website, a statement was posted that “(reporter) Jonathan Dienst and WNBC.com regret the error and sincerely apologize for providing the incorrect information.”

* Disclaimer: Former FBNY editor Dylan Stableford and this editor have both contributed guest posts for Deadspin in the past.

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