Yang Yi, journalism integrity & Rockets

Hi, thanks for all the information. But I think the title of this thread should be retitled to become more descriptive of its contents, and second, to get more regular readers here who should be interested in it but miss out because the title doesn't include Yao Ming (and what HE SAID!! About being confident in getting to PLAYOFFS the 2ND ROUND GWKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK)

okay, nice thread. Thanks

 

honestly...does this sound like something any GM in the league would do? what GM would ask a player which one he wants to get rid of? especially a player who had just finished his rookie season!! come on...this seems pretty far fetched.

 

not only that, but all things considered...especially when you see them buddying up to each other on the cort and on the bench....that statement just doesnt ring true.

also...from whatwe know about his personality...do you honestly think he is goin to go around and talk bad about his teammates behind their backs?

I dont.

It is statements like that which lead some to question whether or not he is reporting the facts or twisting things to suit his views.

btw....I think the quote from Jeff referenced above is the one in my sig...very funny stuff.

 

rockets2k i think you miss read one part. Junshao said yao did NOT say who he didnt like, but did say that he liked sf and cat. so he did not disparage any of his teammates behimd their back

 

That just tells you that the Rockets already decided to build the team around Yao even last year. And the good thing about Yao is that he did not say anything bad about his teammates behind their backs. Instead he praised CM and SF.

 

so I did...in this case.

but I seem to recall a "article" that was posted a while abck when this whole thing started that said differntly.

IIRC...the guy was hinting that Yao didnt like one of the guards..

I dont recall exactly...but it was something like that.

my point remains the same....some of the things that this Yang Yi guy have claimed as fact dont jibe withthe Yao that we know and the stuff that we know have happened over here.

my apologies for not reading junshao's post better...I normally dont overlook stuff like that.

 

either way it doesn't matter....

back to my question....what GM would ever talk to a player about what players he doesn't like and who he would want to get rid of?

 

sorry...no edit


yall do realize how unprofessional this sounds on the pard of CD. i know we all question his personnel moves at times, but this would be a complete disregard for professionalism on his part and i don't think CD is that kind of low class sort of guy. i mean wouldn't you think you would have to be pretty low to be asking players who they don't like on the team? also, that is the job of the GM to decide that...not the job of yao and i don't think CD would be looking for a rookie's advice on who to keep and who to get rid of.

this is a joke.

 

Do you guys seriously think CD and JVG go around clueless about who likes who on the team? Do you guys work in team/management environments in your day jobs?

I'm not sure there's an exact analogy in our jobs to what's going on in Houston... but yea, absolutely, if I had a "star" performer on my team, I absolutely would do whatever it took to find out the dynamics of his working relationship with other players.

I've seen managers do far worse in every day meeting rooms. Why do you assume CD wouldn't do the same?

And why do you assume Yao wouldn't speak up? It's not a matter of back-stabbing. I know in American culture, it's kind of a given that you'll never "sell-out" your peers to the authority... even the geekiest most moral guy in class understands THAT rule.

That's *not* always the case in Chinese culture. When a teacher in a Chinese school asks who's been smoking, there's a very good chance one of the other students will turn you in. If Yao was asked the honest question by the authority (CD), I'd expect him to answer honestly.

 

no i dont think they go clueless but i'm sure they also don't go around behind people's backs asking who likes who and who doesn't like who and who thinks which person should be off the team. that is an extremely negative atmosphere if you think that goes on with this organization.

 

For those of you who never actually studied journalism, let me give a brief 101...

Journalists are supposed to be subjective. That subjectivity allows them to maintain a degree of objectivity in their stories. What that means to the reader is that, while they may slant one way or the other on an issue or person, they tend to keep that opinion fairly close to the vest and do their best to maintain some objective distance.

Columnists speak their mind in columns they write but they rarely quote someone out of context. If they did, there is a good chance they'd lose their jobs.

Most importantly, with most journalism, there is oversight. In America, if you disagree, you can state your case to other media sources and even sue for libel. There are also organizations that review content for ethical standards and plenty of watchdog groups who monitor the media.

With Sina, there isn't any objectivity or journalistic ethical oversight. Most of the Chinese media is governement-controlled making independence pretty difficult. Censorship is common in the Chinese media.

And Yang Yi writes stories like he is telling his diary about the date he had with his girlfriend. They are free-flowing conversations that have little or nothing to do with journalism. There is no verifiable source unless we could go directly to Yao, which we can't. Reporters and media outlets here read his statements and ignore them because the credibility of those stories is so low that they could risk their own jobs if they reported them.

Yi doesn't hold himself to journalistic standards. There is no corraborating evidence, no second or third source, no verification process. It's just him writing down a conversation and publishing it. It is more like a gossip column than a news story.

The reason I have a problem with stories like these is because they don't reflect good standards in journalism. My father, his sister and his brother were all journalists. My wife and I were both journalism majors. I have quite a few friends who are writers and broadcasters. Just like all of them, I HATE sloppy, innaccurate and gossipy reporting. Yi is guilty of tabloid-style reporting and that leaves him with zero credibility among those who consider good, ethical, objective reporting imperitive to distributing news.

 

Take what you can get out of it.

Yang Yi isn't much different than those columnist at ESPN, or whatever you want to call them.

 

Jeff,

I understand you from a professional journalist point of view. But I don't think you can just judge a guy's credibility simply by his style.

As a layman (i.e. an idiot when it comes to journalism), I think Yang Yi's stories are worth reading--with a grain of salt. Yao obviously knows this guy and doesn't mind him writing stuff about their alleged conversations. Nowhere do I see Yao complain about Yang of taking things out of context or misrepresenting his words. To me (again, I'm a layman) that is a significant piece of credibility.

IMHO, simply because he doesn't write in standard journalistic style doesn't leave him "with zero credibility."

 

Is he a journalist? No.

Is he a gossip columnist? No. A free-flowing gossip columnist, with the keyword on the term "gossip", regularly quotes from "unknown sources". Yang Yi's a guy who's the same general age as Yao Ming, who has known Yao his entire adult life, and the two are clearly friends.

What would you say if Colin Pine published a diary/blog of his experiences after he left the Rockets? Would you also decry his stories as having a lack of credibility, because "he's not a journalist"?

If you want to say that Yang Yi's not a *journalist* in the tradition of the media greats, then that's fine... I don't think anyone here is interested in debating that point with you. But it's when you start questioning his *credibility* that people start wondering... on what basis do you doubt his accounts of private conversations with Yao?

Surely, even you'd accept that if he's regularly quoting Yao out of context... well, Yao must not care about his reputation much, if he's still meeting the guy for dinner and still referring to him as a confidante.

 

If you are to assume that his opinion = reality, it most certainly does.

And, I'm not talking about "style" meaning he needs to pull out his AP Stylebook and follow the rules. I'm talking about objective writing. When he "speaks for Yao" on things, he has to give more credible proof that it isn't just him writing what he thinks and what he wants. No other journalist would ever post an opinion like that without having secondary sources.

Now, if you want to equate him with Chad Ford or Peter Vescey, that's fine. That's about the same calliber of material especially when you consider Ford and Vescey are wrong about 90 percent of the time.

But, trying to pass Yi's ramblings off as the absolute truth about Yao is a mistake.

By the way, this...

sounded really arrogant and stupid. I'm sorry I posted it now because it sounds like I'm trying to pass myself off as Edward R. Murrow, which I am most certainly not.

I guess it is just that I get really frustrated by sensationalized stories getting trumpeted as fact. Pet peeve for me I guess.

 

I second Easy's view. The problem with Yang-Yi is that you'll get a bad general impression after reading many of his stories, but there is nothing you can point to and say "That's a lie". Yeh, we know we cannot verify those things, but the fact that Yao is still being friend with him says something about his credibility.

He is like a freelance sports reporter with a columnist style, so you just take what you want with his reports.

BTW, I had very high respect for America media before came to the States, but I've to say that I've been very disappointed in them in general based on my own observation. I wouldn't rate the main stream media here much higher above the government controlled Chinese media.


--daoshi

 

It's toilet reading material. I dont treat it seriously. It's printed, if there is a market, there is a market, it will keep coming. Educate the mob then.