Once More With Feeling: WBAL Reinstates Story on Sex Abuse at Michael Phelps’ Swim Club — Reschedules Journalist Tim Joyce’s Radio Interview Today
Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren: Where Do YOU Stand on Hearings Into the USA Swimming Sex Abuse Scandal?
October 3, 2012USA Swimming FAQ Assures ‘Board Members and Others’ That They’re Not Riding on the Titanic, They’re Just Making a Stop for Ice
October 4, 2012In a peculiar sequence, WBAL Radio in Baltimore last night re-posted on its website my fellow investigative journalist Tim Joyce’s newest and most important story yet on the dirty waters of the USA Swimming sex abuse scandal: solidly sourced information that the molestations and cover-up involve a coach at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club, the long-time swimming home of Michael Phelps.
Merrie Street, the station’s news director, states in an editor’s note: “Due to the serious nature of this story, WBAL news removed Tim Joyce’s story from the website earlier Wednesday to allow us to do our ‘due dilligence.’ After personally interviewing unimpeachable sources who corrborated the information Tim wrote the decision was made to return the story to the web with absolutely no changes.”
See “Swimming Coach Accused Of Molestation At North Baltimore Aquatic Club,” http://www.wbal.com/article/94454/30/template-story/Swimming-Coach-Accused-Of-Molestation-At-Michael-Phelps-North-Baltimore-Aquatic-Club.
WBAL also has booked Joyce again for his live on-air interview, same time, same station: 1:05 p.m. EDT (10:05 a.m. PDT) today, Thursday. I know I’ll be listening to the live stream at http://wbal.com.
In the end, WBAL’s waffling yesterday is less important than their getting it right today. As readers here know, I went through something similar with my pre-Olympics feature on the swimming sex scandals for Yahoo Sports’ ThePostGame.com. At the point where Yahoo’s own “due diligence” clearly crossed over into due spinelessness, I pulled the story, which then got published at MomsTeam.com a day before The Washington Post broke Kelley Davies-Currin’s revelation of her years of statutory rapes at the hands of her coach Rick Curl. Too little, too late, The Post Game pretended that it still had the rights to my story, and briefly published it before a lawyer for MomsTeam made The Post Game take it down. See “Swimming Sex Abuse Expose Killed by Yahoo Sports — Read It Now at MomsTeam.com,” July 24, https://concussioninc.net/?p=5771, and “Yahoo Sports’ ThePostGame.com Jumps Into the Pool,” July 26, https://concussioninc.net/?p=5788.
Back to Joyce, who in his WBAL piece asks the essential question:
“[W]hen is enough enough? Now that this cancer-like scandal has spread to the most important swim club in the country, will there be calls for the entire leadership of Colorado Springs to step down? Will it finally trigger the kind of federal investigation that has long been warranted?”
Irv Muchnick