Another mini-scandal for this blog

Today, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review (an almost-insolvent, right-wing Pittsburgh paper) ran a story about the negative attention and harassment that has been focused on the woman who's car Roethlisberger collided into last week. Obviously, such idiots give Steelers fans a bad name.

Folks on steelcityinsider picked up the story and started looking for blood (its currently a two page string of posts...page 1 here, page 2 here). By 3:30 in the afternoon someone had, they claimed, emailed the Tribune Review for the source blogs, and was told this blog (and, probably, this post) is the bad guy. I just posted a response there you can check out. Since almost no one came to this blog on the day of Roethlisberger's accident, I can be pretty sure that I didn't start the harassment. But, still, I feel bad because that was never my intent. As regular readers know I almost never post anything non-ironic or non-satirical on this blog. This gets me in to trouble when people read posts out of context.

Just to clarify, the point of the post was to show how irresponsible the PGH media was for listing Fleishman's name and city neighborhood so early in the story's development. She was being tagged in every article in the local news media well before any other real detail of the accident was known (also well before the extent of Ben's injuries were known...which makes it doubly irresponsible). I put a link to google to show just how much info is easily available online once someone's name gets out in the "real" media. I know it can be read otherwise, as a wink or a nod to people to actually call up the poor lady, but that really wasn't the point. I also accused the Patriots of arranging the whole thing, but I wasn't serious about that either.

Now, to the tirade....the poster on steelcityinsider appears to be posting info from a Michael Hasch at the Tribune Review saying my blog was one of the sources for the story (Hasch is not the attributed author to the original article). The story says:

"One blogger, who posted Fleishman's home address and telephone number, was typical of the merciless Internet attackers. "She had Maine license plates. ... freaking New England fan ... I don't think she will be getting the key to the city any time soon.""

I can see how my post was close to the above paragraph. But, if this blog really is the source than the above is an out-and-out misrepresentation of what I said....pure FICTION if you will. Also, for the record, I use the word "fucking" instead of "freaking" on this space. I have no doubt that the Trib had enough integrity to actually find one of the many posts that displays actual anger against the woman and to quote it accurately. I'm sure many people picked up on the connection between the Maine license plates and the New England Patriots.

The real question is why would this guy at the Trib, after the fact, claim that my post was the source for the story? Furthermore, why haven't the Pittsburgh news outlets that are actually responsible for all this negative attention actually looked into how and why the info was released so early. Where did her name come from? The police didn't release it...

I do feel bad to have been involved, even slightly, in the bad judgment of a few rotten apples. But, I really think the true story here is how the Pittsburgh news outlets found the woman's name and why they chose to release it the way they did.