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But it gets funnier: the article reports that Williams told the judge: "I despair for our free press if we go very far down this road...Whistleblowers won't come forward. Injustices will never see the light of day. Our people will be less informed and worse off." Noble sentiments, you might think - but only if you are already very much "less informed". Otherwise, you think: skullduggery (Defn: verbal misrepresentation intended to take advantage of you).
Who are these two? As part of the San Francisco Chronicle's coverage of steroid use in sports: "in December 2004 they reported in the Chronicle on the secret grand jury testimony of pro baseball players Jason Giambi and Barry Bonds, making headlines around the world". That is, they leaked the grand jury testimony, not of authorities in power nor those representing their interests, but of entertainers who make their living bashing a ball with a stick. And, as his bio shows [1], Fainaru-Wada has nothing to back up his oft-repeated claim that he is an investigative journalist. He is a sports writer: an entertainer who makes his living bashing other entertainers who make their living bashing a ball with a stick.
Were people "better informed" by these reporters' entertaining titillations? Fainaru-Wada's defense to the judge: "A fraud was being perpetrated on sports fans." So, presumably freedom of the press includes the freedom to pronounce guilt before any charges have been filed. Another Chron sports writer, Bruce Jenkins, boasts of this "freedom" of the press, writing in his recent column that the reporters: "wrote a book ("Game of Shadows") that was so thorough in its reporting, Sports Illustrated's first instinct was to headline its Barry Bonds cover story with a simple word: "Guilty." The magazine settled on "The Truth," a bit less presumptuous while driving the point well home." [2]
But, as Randy Shaw points out in Beyond Chron's "Chronicle "BALCO" Reporters Do Not Merit Public Support", "Williams and Fainaru-Wada did a public disservice by elevating non-credible, unverified testimony in a secret hearing to the status of "TRUTH."" [3]
So if the people were not served by Williams and Fainaru-Wada's reporting, then who was? Certainly, Williams and Fainaru-Wada themselves profited from the leak, another point not missed by Shaw: "The publication of this leaked testimony got the reporters a book deal, national media attention, frequent front-page Chronicle headlines, and the chance to do what so many of their colleagues have wanted to do for years, which was to damage the credibility of Barry Bonds' baseball achievements."
Ironically, in an interview of stunning hypocrisy, Fainaru-Wada himself provides the clearest explanation of why his reporting was not a service to the public: "If you're going to start having reporters being investigative arms of the government, the public is not going to be well served by the press." [4] Meanwhile, in the same interview, he admits that his investigation was propelled by leaks that could only have come from either local or federal agents involved in prosecuting the case:
"We had a tipster provide us some information on what had happened in the [BALCO] raids. And the tipster indicated that the raids had yielded steroids, that the case was about performance-enhancing drugs, and that some of these athletes, including Bonds and others, would be implicated for their use of these drugs. That was about two weeks after the raid, so obviously that ratcheted up the interest of the paper. From that point on, pretty much Lance and I were on the story full time, and just trying to find out anything and everything we could about the investigation, about these folks who were involved, about the athletes."
And exactly where else but the federal government does one go to get a "leaked" federal grand jury transcript - Transcripts 'R Us? Reporting as "an investigative wing of the government" is a fitting description of Williams and Fainaru-Wada's role in the Balco case.
Who else did their reporting serve? Let's not forget the federal prosecutors that have certainly benefitted from the notoriety of an intense media trial of a case so weak that the longest prison term handed down was four months. And, as Fainaru-Wada likes to remind us, after the Chron titillations, Bush mentioned steroid abuse in his 2004 State of the Union address and his top cop, John Ashcroft, paused from his busy schedule of abduction and torture to announce the BALCO indictments at a nationally televised news conference in Washington DC. So putting the case in "headlines around the world" seemed to fit neatly with a Bush-Ashcroft agenda - an agenda with an intent that has never before been characterized as bringing injustices out into the light of day. If any doubt remains about who Williams and Fainaru-Wada serve, just look at who filed affidavits in their support. Mark Corallo, who served as Ashcroft's spokesman on the PATRIOT Act and worked for Karl Rove's PR team shortly before Scooter Libby was indicted, came to bat for his running dogs. California's Attorney General Bill Lockyer vouched for them too [5]. Now "Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press" presumably expects Indybay readers to join hands with Corallo and Lockyer and support their hatchet men!
Indeed, while incalculable amounts of ink and bandwidth continue to be wasted on the non-story of steroids in sports, the same media ignores or minimally reports related, well-proven, and far more threatening frauds being perpetrated on sports fans (and everyone else): police use of steroids and their de facto immunity from prosecution [6], and the use of the federal grand jury as "an inquisitorial bulldozer that...now runs roughshod over the constitutional rights of citizens" [7], and to intimidate and imprison those who publicly dissent [8]. Williams and Fainaru-Wada cannot be counted among dissenters but among those who, like Judith Miller, made their fame from spreading government disinformation. Yet now they expect the public to support them in their internal spat with their benefactors. Let's not forget when Barry Bonds chided Congress members investigating steroids in the aftermath of Katrina: "There are still other issues that are more important [than steroid use in baseball]. Right now people are losing lives and don't have homes. I think that's a little more serious, a lot more serious."
Sports writers responded by calling his sentiments self-serving, and branded him "a phony". Presumably, their logic is to mistrust an entertainer that only develops a public social conscience when facing jail time. By that logic, we expect to see those same sports writers brand Williams and Fainaru-Wada as self-serving phonies, whose hypocritical attempt to belatedly embrace a social cause is best viewed as comic relief in our grim times, if one wishes to avoid chucking up a perfectly good meal.
Notes:
[1] http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/05/05/MNG6BIMGLD6.DTL
[2] http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2006/09/23/SPGV0LB1H61.DTL
[3] http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=3593
[4] Definitely check out this interview for a laugh: 8 comments are posted and all but two royally skewer Fainaru-Wada and/or the whole fraud of the BALCO case! http://www.truthdig.com/interview/item/20060613_truthdig_interview_mark_fainaru_wada
[5] http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/20/EDG0SJ799P1.DTL&hw=Mark+Fainaru+Wada&sn=001&sc=1000
[6] I've tried to summarize this story in "Behind BALCO: The Hidden Officer Involved Shooting" at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/04/16/18157391.php
[7] "A Grand Facade: How the Grand Jury Was Captured by Government", Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-476es.html
[8] "trial by ordeal:The Modern-Day Witch Hunt", http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2005/06/07/17461171.php
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