Brad Marley

I had a few final thoughts I wanted to add after my recent posts around the allegations against the University of Michigan football team, mainly that Michael Rosenberg was just doing his job, same as if I picked up my phone and called a reporter with a story idea or my wife inserted a pic line (I hope I'm spelling that correctly) into her patient.

But then the Detroit Free Press addressed them and, well, there's really nothing left to add.

If Michigan lost to Western Michigan last Saturday, I suspect this issue would have grown to epic proportions in Ann Arbor and beyond, but winning tends to sooth the savage beast.  I guess we'll have to wait until after next weekend's game against Notre Dame to pick up the story where we left off. (Kidding.)

Anyway, here's the Free Press' explanation of how this story came to be.  Worth a read, no matter which camp you are ensconced in.

The recent allegations against University of Michigan football coach Rich Rodriguez provide a great example of why we need newspapers and journalism, in one form or another, to survive.  

MGoBlog, which bills itself as "a somewhat comprehensive Michigan sports blog," has been following the story closely these past few days as more information about the investigation comes to light. (If you have not been paying attention, blogs are kind of popular.)

But we can't expect – and the blogger doesn't try to indicate otherwise — that a blog written by an alumnus of the University of Michigan would be objective. It would be like a Christian blogger reacting to new evidence that Jesus Christ didn't exist: their words only serve to lather up the faithful.

Journalists, on the other hand, abide by a professional code of ethics that states "public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy."  It is their job to find the truth and report to the public.  

And that truth can sometimes manifest itself as players on a college football team who were fed up with a program that, in their minds, is breaking NCAA rules.

It doesn't matter who the coach is, which school it is, or what their record is.  If journalists are given information that the public deserves to know and, after thorough research, is deemed legit, they are obligated to report it. 

We may not like it, and we may not agree with it, but without it, we would all just be preaching to the choir, and how interesting would that be?