Outside class June18

I watched a show called “Outside the Lines” on ESPN the other night. It Is an Emmy-winning show that deals with mostly social issues in sports. They had a panel discussion on a very interesting subject.
Everyone knows how big an issue steroid use is in baseball. Due to the high profile convictions of our generation’s best players, any major league baseball player is subject to debate on whether he did or didn’t take steroids.
The issue at hand was that a writer for a small Midwest sports blog wrote a piece on a player named Raul Ibanez. He is a late thirties ball player that was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies in the offseason. His whole career he has been a solid player, but this year he had significantly higher numbers and producing with the likes of the best players in the game. This was not really the issue. The issue was that this blog writer was condemning Ibanez and accusing him of taking performance-enhancing drugs. In the past something written in a small blog would’ve never been made known to the public. But in these times with all of the media outlets this thing blew up, and Ibanez actually made a statement talking about how writers should be more responsible and be held more accountable for what they write, even if it is a small blog. I think he makes a great point. These days you can write anything in a blog just like I’m doing now, and not be held accountable for it, unless maybe it’s a national security threat.
With today’s mass media outlets writers, professional or unprofessional, have to be more careful about what they are writing, because these stories spread like wildfire. I do not think it is write for some sports fan to defame a player that has never tested positive or done anything wrong in his whole baseball career. The whole blog thing is a great way for people to interact and share information on any topic when used right. But when used wrong any random Joe can bash someone and totally affect that person’s reputation. Due to this reason I think there should be some way to censor some of these blogs or have regulations for posting, or eventually blogs will turn into people just bashing and defaming other people with no retributions.