Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Borges Gets Burned For Real

It's a week of joy for a great many members of the fanbase of the New England Patriots, because the worst excuse for a reporter to cover the Patriots has been suspended without pay from the Boston Globe for plagurizing an article from a Tacoma, WA paper.

Seeing Ron Borges crash and burn is one of those rare examples of a story developing piece by piece in rapid fashion but it is also an example of sadistic joy. Borges has been a Broadsheet Bully for many years. Some, such as Glen Ordway of WEEI Radio in Boston, have stated that Borges is driven by a hard agenda, but that at least some of his critics are also agenda-driven in that they use his anti-Bill Belichick attitude as a reason on top of the plagurism to attack Borges until he is finished in media.

What those who offer this line of reasoning ignore is that Borges pushes an agenda that is contrary to reality and which in fact is detrimental to the success of the team he has covered. Bill Belichick does not cooperate with the sports media to any significant extent, because it does nothing to advance his cause - leading the Patriots to success. On the contrary, the media can help defeat a team by fostering acrimony, internal dissent, and so forth - most spectacularly seen by Dan "The Shank" Shaughnessy and his slanted reporting that helped lead to the Theo Epstein episode of late-2005.

Borges' coverage of the Patriots is aimed at discrediting their coach; that Borges has failed to do so does not stop him from this agenda. Why he pushes such an absurd agenda is a mystery. In any event Borges has let the general hate that permeates his reporting get the best of him, and for this his downfall should be greeted positively.

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