If true, what Sports Illustrated reporter Jon Heyman is being accused of by his colleagues is a major ethics breach. The context—a free agent baseball star’s negotiation with teams competing with each other for his services—is a narrow one, but it challenges us to ponder how often the same dishonesty occurs in other news reporting contexts.
The free agent is Texas Ranger left-handed pitcher Cliff Lee. Lee has played for four different teams since winning the Cy Young Award as the American League’s best pitcher three years ago, and is widely regarded as a mercenary who will go wherever the money is right (not that anything’s wrong with that). He is the proverbial Big Enchilada in this baseball off-season’s free agent derby, expected to get a contract extending at least six or seven years and worth close to $150 million. Right now, the battle for Lee’s services is between the Texas Rangers, his current team and defending American League Champions, and the New York Yankees, the runner-up to the Rangers in 2010 and historically able to outbid any team when they really want a player—and they really want Cliff Lee.
Both teams reportedly have their offers on the table, with Lee playing hard-to-get and taking his own sweet time making a decision. Sometimes, in such scenarios where the bidding between two teams has stopped, the player’s agent will start a rumor that a “mystery team” has entered the bidding, hoping to prompt one of the two finalists to raise an offer that may already be the highest on the table. This tactic is dishonest and unprofessional, of course, but so are a disturbing number of sports agents.
Veteran baseball writers know about this trick, which means that they should go out of their way to expose the lie if it ever gets outside closed doors. Some reporters, however, apparently reinforce their relationship with certain agents for future considerations (like inside tips on future stories) by helping to spread a false “mystery team” rumor. It’s a big favor: the agent will get 15% or so of any extra millions that tactic generates for the agent’s client, and the reporter, in return, has betrayed the public’s trust.
Today, Heyman posted a story on the Sports Illustrated website that begins,“Free agent Cliff Lee is planning to make his decision early this week, according to people familiar with negotiations. The Texas Rangers, New York Yankees and a third mystery team are all still thought to be alive as Lee deliberates the biggest player call of the winter.” Heyman goes on to say that the “mystery team remains a mystery” and that its chances of landing Lee are considered “a long shot.”
Especially if the team doesn’t really exist. This is what many of Heyman’s colleagues assume. NBC baseball reporter/blogger Craig Calcaterra, for example, writes, “Such wagers are outlawed in this country, but were they not, I would bet my children that, as is usually the case, this “mystery team” is the invention of an agent who has Heyman on speed-dial.”
The tone of the anti-Heyman commentary is of the “oh boy, there goes Jon Heyman again!” variety, which trivializes what would be an outrageous journalistic ethics violation. Knowing that the “mystery team” is usually a ploy, Heyman is obligated not to report the existence of such a team as fact unless he can confirm it, and his column gives no reason to believe he has. If, as Calcaterra and others believe, Heyman is knowingly publishing a lie as truth, he is misleading the public to aid and abet a fraudulent negotiating ploy. If Sports Illustrated knows or even suspects its reporter is engages in such am unethical practice, it has an obligation to investigate, discover the truth, disclose it, and trade Jon Heyman to 7-11 for a Big Gulp.
Returning to my introduction, however, I do wonder if this happens in other spheres of journalism, and if, as in the case of Sports Illustrated, other media outlets permit the practice to keep sources happy. I think it probably does. Heyman’s small niche breach of his obligation as a reporter does more than sully his reputation; it creates suspicion about the trustworthiness of reporters in general.
File this as Reason #3,568 not to trust the news media.
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Update: To be fair, later in the day, other reporters determined that there really was a mystery team: the Philadelphia Phillies. Still, most agree that Heyman’s source was Cliff Lee’s agent, and that he never bothered to confirm whether there was a new bidder for Lee, or whether he was just being used to trick the other teams into raising their offers. The criticism above still is valid. Heyman was the beneficiary of moral luck.
Ethics Alarms 
Not I, nor any of my colleagues, would write about something we knew (or even suspected) was false, offering it as a truth. When the truth eventually comes out, someone like Heyman would either look like the biggest moron or an unethical journalist, and at least at my newspaper, he’d get canned. Most journalists I know believe their job is to inform and educate the reader, not cut deals with those we write about.
We’re hard working people who work nights, weekends, holidays and countless split-shifts. We stand in the freezing cold waiting to get an interview with a police officer about a traffic accident; sit in court all day listening to gut-wrenching testimony; talk to the parents and siblings of recently killed American soldiers; attend countless municipal meetings looking for information that readers need to know; etc. We do this and then put our observations into words that will hopefully engage (and perhaps educate) readers. We have families and friends and lives outside of work. We don’t wish for disaster so we can have something to write about. We don’t take pleasure in someone’s loss. Most of us are people trying to do our job the best way we know how.
But, like with other occupations, the bad eggs out there (more often in the national media) reflect on the rest of us and it stinks.
I know from personal experience that you’re one of the good ones out there. But how is a “mystery team” ever shown to be a mirage? It’s even worse than “anonymous sources.”
I never use anonymous sources. As for the “mystery team,” while I admit it can’t be proven false unless the agent admits it, but, if as you say, most reporters with an ounce of experience and intelligence knows they are a myth, a reporter should tell his source (the agent for example) that unless he gives up the name of the “mystery team” then either a. he won’t write the story at all, or b. he’ll write the story, but include content and quotes from someone who will go on the record and say that sometimes a third “mystery team” is nothing but a ruse to get the two named teams to up the ante. That’s how I’d handle it.
That sounds just right. But, of course, the agent doesn’t want anyone to know that the story came from him, because he is a biased source.
Of course, but as a reporter, I’d still give him the option of going on the record. If he choose not to, then the story wouldn’t run at all. No anonymous sources; there are too many people out there with ulterior motives…
But Debbie—how many reporters now avoid anonymous sources? The Post uses them all the time.
I don’t know the answer to that. I’ve worked at the same newspaper for more than nine years and not once has any reporter been allowed to use an anonymous source. Sadley, my guess is, with the Internet becoming a source of instant access to “news,” more and more newspapers will lower their standards by accept anonymous sources and once source stories.