I’d like to answer Aaron Gleeman’s questions:

I’d encourage everyone to read Morris’ article from last year and Cox’s article from yesterday, and then judge for themselves just how similar they are. I tend to think they’re pretty damn close, which is why it seems so strange to me that Cox isn’t receiving anywhere close to the same treatment that Morris did.

Is it because mainstream media members aren’t nearly as eager to pick on one of their own? Is it because Morris was mostly just a way for people to launch a larger-scale attack on bloggers and blogging as a whole? Is it because the Phillies and Philadelphia simply get more coverage in the baseball world than the Blue Jays and Toronto? Or is there something else at play?

The first question probably has a little to do with it, but not that much. I think the fourth question, something else, has a lot to do with it. Baustista simply denied he used steroids. Ibanez saw the questions about steroids as an attack on his integrity, and he started the attack on the blogger. The reporters who knew Ibanez liked him, and believed he had integrity. The media had information about Ibanez that the blogger didn’t, because the bloggers don’t get to interact with the players much.

A sports reporter would not write such a thing about Ibanez, because they thought Ibanez was above reproach.

Bautista, up until this year, was not a very good player. He’s going to attract less attention. Maybe he’s not as out going as Ibanez. So the reaction when questions about him come up is, “I don’t know him that well, maybe he did that.”

The reaction to the Ibanez post wasn’t the finest moment for reporters. They took advantage of their inside information to attack the competition, and to drive home the idea that if they don’t report a story, it’s not news.