Thursday, May 08, 2008

Daily Texan Tackles Athletic Establishment

Congratulations to the Daily Texan, the Texas student newspaper, for standing up to bullying tactics by a Longhorn athletic department official.

The Daily Texan, in an editorial titled "Unwritten rules of covering college sports hurt readers," tells the story of behind-the-scenes maneuvering by assistant athletic director John Bianco, who did his best to get a story on quarterback John Chiles removed from the paper's blog. Here is part of the editorial:

"Last month, The Daily Texan reported on its blog that the Austin Police Department suspended an assault with injury investigation in which Longhorns backup quarterback John Chiles was a suspect. When the Texan originally reported that APD confirmed Chiles as a suspect, assistant athletics director John Bianco wrote several threatening emails to Daily Texan sports editor and journalism senior Ricky Treon, calling him unprofessional and his reporting 'untruthful.'

"Bianco warned that other news agencies (and potential employers) 'realize how you do business now,' which 'will hurt you in the long run.' He also said that if the Texan's editors didn't pull the post off the blog, 'John Chiles would understandably have an issue with the entire paper' which would be 'unfortunate for the Texan's long-term working relationship with him.' "

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Classic arrogance by the t.u. athletic department in their behavior. I wish the NCAA would get involved and investigate this. Good job Daily Texan for shining the light on the outlaw Athletic Departments. Even bigger credit for being willing to discuss this since it involves your own university.

Anonymous said...

Bravo Bevo!

Way to stick to your guns, a really great article in every sense.

"Considering our football players' history with arrests - close to 10 in the last year, for charges ranging from possession of marijuana to having an unlicensed gun to automobile burglary to probation violation - public concern about Longhorn athletes' conduct is high, and the Texan has a duty to hold players accountable"

I guess the T stands for "Thugs", right Charlie?