Adam Maya/OC Register In CYA Mode: Fails To Take Responsibility, Attacks Player's Parent

by Nestor on Nov 4, 2009 6:55 PM PST Comment 9 comments

So after staying mum for almost three days about why he advanced bogus attacks on UCLA Head Coach Rick Neuheisel, Adam Maya (the Trojan alum posing as a "UCLA beat reporter" for the OC Register) finally followed up on his garbage story.

First, he didn't take any responsibility for his completely failing on his job by not following up with Brian Theriot to verify that he had indeed posted disparaging comments about Rick Neuheisel. Then instead of issuing a contrite apology on how he just dropped the ball he posted a "Q&A" with Brian Theriot which frankly comes across as an attack on Theriot so that Maya could CHOA. Here is a sampling of Maya's "hard hitting" questions (again no link for his garbage blog post):

Maya: There were multiple posts on your Facebook page attacking the program, beginning Saturday night and continuing through Monday morning. In-between there were multiple posts on Brett Favre and Halloween photos, which have not been removed. If you posted those, you would have seen the comments from Saturday night, which were still on your page as of Monday. Are those your posts from Sunday?
Theriot: "I’m a big Brett Favre fan. My last post I think was about 5:20 p.m., Sunday."

Maya: Right. And the posts attacking the program came before and after that. The first ones were from Saturday evening, shortly after the UCLA-Oregon State game. The others came on Monday morning. You’ve admitted you posted Sunday. So if someone else wrote these posts on Monday, what about the posts from Saturday?
Theriot: "Those aren’t me. I don’t attack the program. I’ll be honest with you, do I disagree with the use of my son? Yes, but that’s irrelevant. That’s no reason to attack the problem. In the midst of all this (on Monday), I was communicating with Bob Field, the associate athletic director, about the situation with my son."

So let's get this right. Here is a "reporter" who first pursued a dumb non story about a player's parent being concerned about his son's playing time. In his pursuit he posted comments from a facebook wall without actually verifiying that they did belong to that player's parent and so that he could push the storyline of how Neuheisel might have been losing control of the program. Now after being exposed that he didn't exercise any kind of basic jouranlistc ethics by actually verifying the quotes he goes on a CYA mode attacking the player's parent and without issuing any kind of apology.

Seriously who knows what Theriot actually did. At this point that's not the story. The story here is now is that we have a reporter, who appears to have gotten exposed for pursuing a total hit job against the football head coach of his alma mater's bitter cross town rival, and he is now desperately trying to weasel out of it.

Simply disgusting. Maya is obviously a joke. The bigger joke right now is the OC Register who apparently has no regard whatsover for basic journalism in their sports section. Pathetic.

GO BRUINS.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.

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to be honest with you

I don’t know if Theriots story sounds believable to me. Not saying he’s not telling the truth, just saying Im not convinced he is.

"when you've seen how big the world is, how can you make due with this?"

by silverlakebruin on Nov 4, 2009 8:05 PM PST reply actions 0 recs

Yeah, I get that

However, the problem here is why didn’t Maya contact him first before just cutting and pasting those comments (whoever they belong to) from his facebook wall. And he doesn’t provide any explanation for it.

by Nestor on Nov 4, 2009 8:20 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Theriot's credibility is irrelevant

He’s probably trying to save face after humiliating himself and his son. The issue here is that his stupid comments were freakin reported by a newspaper as news. If they wanted to make a story of it, they obviously had to contact him, not only to verify but actually give them some original info so their story isn’t just a cut-and-paste from facebook. It would’ve still been an extremely stupid, pointless story (like the Tom Craft one from last year) but at least it would’ve reached a bare minimum in terms of journalistic standards.

Or they could’ve done a larger story maybe on a national trend of parents dissing coaches on the internet, using this as one example. At least that would’ve had SOME potential value. (Though probably not.)

And now Maya’s turning this into a cross-examination of Theriot, as if the guy’s trying to deny some extremely important confession? It only underscores the stupidity of the whole story.

by bluebland on Nov 5, 2009 3:57 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Yep

And it exposes Maya having some kind of underlying agenda in pushing this non story.

by Nestor on Nov 5, 2009 4:34 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs

And seriously, was anyone in the world supposed to care about the PT controversy of a walk-on fullback?

by bluebland on Nov 5, 2009 6:38 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

It doesn't matter whether Daddy's story is true or not.

The way the story was written and the follow up is what’s important. Apparently the source for the story was something which the alleged reporter read somewhere. How good was the source? Well, we don’t know, because no one actually knows who the source is. So what we have is this idiot writing a story and claiming it is a fact, when he had no real basis to know whether it was true or not. What was to keep this guy from calling Mr. Theriot? I think he felt that if he actually spoke to ostensible source, Mr. Theriot would not have attested that those were his words. That’s reckless disregard for the truth, and that’s the kind of thing that gets newspapers sued for libel. (Maybe the letters to the editor should go instead to that ’wrap’s risk manager.)

The second part of the story is the failure to take action for so long after Mr. Theriot issued a flat denial that those were his words.

This sort of “reporting” is not tolerated in the BN. I remember one of the moderators posted something quite recently to the effect that we had just received official word of something that had been unofficially reported earlier, but our mods wouldn’t post it without verification. Yet this sort of hack journalism is not just tolerated but celebrated by this alleged newspaper. The way the newspaper and this particular “reporter” are treating the story reminds me of an incident a long time ago which was described initially as just a “second rate burglary.” I hope this incident brings down this crappy rag and this crappy reporter just as the “second rate burglary” did. Coverups and non-denial denials don’t work (unless of course you’re a school which has the L.A. Fishwrap in its pocket and which owns the police.)

by Fox 71 on Nov 4, 2009 8:19 PM PST reply actions 0 recs

For those that may not remember...

… Maya’s predecessor on the UCLA blog also had a notable screwup, pinning a “UCLA recruit” with attempted murder charges… even though a review of all the known recruiting sites demsotnrated that we never had a reported interest in him.

There’s a quote in an old Ian Fleming novel: “Once is coincidence, twice is happenstance, third is enemy action.”

I don’t plan on screaming “conspiracy” from any rooftops here, but IMO, the count is 0-and-2.

I REALLY don’t like the looks of OCR’s so-called “journalism.”

We may less than impartial around here, but we seem to get our facts right more often than the “professionals.”

"In this program your passion bucket must be full to play SC." -- CRN, to Dan Patrick, 1/2008

by Meriones on Nov 5, 2009 11:11 AM PST reply actions 0 recs

Here is the link.

http://www.bruinsnation.com/2009/8/27/1004896/oc-register-reporter-smears-ucla#20406887

"In this program your passion bucket must be full to play SC." -- CRN, to Dan Patrick, 1/2008

by Meriones on Nov 5, 2009 11:11 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs

UCLA's Athletic PR dept

Theriot’s FB. Meb’s nationality. Photos of suspended players. A UCLA ’recruit". Letters to the editor about CBH.

Is the media really biased, or is it just totally stupid? And at what point does UCLA bear any burden in these repeated failures by the media?

Or, does UCLA even have an athletic PR dept?

The media are like homeless dogs. If you don’t feed them yourself, they’ll get in the trash can and eat whatever they can, and then the neighbors will wonder why your front yard looks like a dump.

greg in denver - UCLA guy for life

by gbruin on Nov 6, 2009 8:21 AM PST reply actions 0 recs