Caveat Emptor! Lance, Manti and Believing the Sports Media

If you happen to take your inspiration from sports figures, last week was not your week. First, Lance Armstrong confessed that his Tour de France titles were fueled by blood doping and performance enhancing drugs. Next, Deadspin.com reported that the most “heartbreaking and inspirational story of the college football season” was a hoax. Turns out Manti Te’o’s deceased girlfriend Lennay Kekua, to whom the Notre Dame linebacker dedicated much of his play this season, was never real. These revelations are shocking to be sure—Armstrong’s for the sheer duration of his previous denials and Te’o’s for the sheer weirdness. The idea, however, that these revelations will make the sports media change the way it reports them is as much an illusion as Kekua herself.

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