Anatomy of a rumor

by: Frank Carpano

The calls continue to roll in regarding the Ted Bruschi rumor.
In case you are one of the two people in New England who doesn’t know, a rumor began on Monday that Bruschi had died. He did not.

NBCsports.com writer Tom Curran said the rumor began at a television station in Boston. He reported that a producer received an email suggesting the station check out whether Bruschi had died. The email was passed along to the sports department. Apparently it also got tongues wagging and word started to spread. We probably shouldn’t be surprised in this age of blogs, email and text messaging.

I got a call about it on Tuesday afternoon. I tried unsuccessfully to reach Patriots public relations chief, Stacey James. James was unavailable, so I started working the phones.
I asked my sources if they had heard if something happened to Tedy Bruschi. I didn’t want to add fuel to the rumor fire by telling them exactly what I had heard. Each person I spoke to said they hadn’t heard any news on Bruschi.

Late that afternoon, I heard from a friend in the media (who was also trying to get confirmation) that WCVB in Boston had been in Foxboro and saw Bruschi on the practice field (after the rumors began). I believed that was the end of it

All was quiet until 6:30pm on Tuesday. That’s when the newsroom phones began to ring off the hook. People called wanting to know if what they had heard about Bruschi was true. And dozens of callers claimed that they knew somebody who knew somebody who swears it was true.

I personally took dozens of calls from friends who asked for confirmation. When I told them it was bogus, told me I was wrong. They told me they were with somebody who knew somebody who: (take your pick), knows the policeman who rode in the rescue with Bruschi, knows a nurse at the hospital, knows a Bruschi family friend. My friends warned me that they knew better, and I better be sure to get it right.

It was wild. Everybody had a different angle on the story.
Well, Tuesday night around 9pm, we finally got confirmation from Stacey James of the Patriots. Bruschi was okay. And James couldn’t believe how many phone calls we got.

I also spoke with one of Bruschi’s teammates who had heard the rumor. He had called an assistant coach who told him the rumors weren’t true.

We did not report the story on Tuesday at 11. Why Not? Because we don’t report rumors. And my gut told me that whoever started this rumor was attempting to find out if he could great a media storm, ultimately getting it mentioned on radio, TV and the newspapers. My feeling was, why encourage someone like that. And, I truly believe that our viewers trust us enough to know that if it’s happened, we’ll report it. If we don’t have it, it didn’t happen!

End of story? Not quite

Wednesday brought more viewer calls, people wondering if we had heard about Bruschi’s rumored demise. At that point, we started to question whether we should mention something on the air.

For those of you who believe that decisions regarding which story’s we report are made lightly should have been in the newsroom on Wednesday. We sought the opinion of our bosses at the Media General corporate offices in Richmond, Virginia. While, as a rule we do not report rumors, perhaps this was a special case.

To Media General’s credit, the issue was floated with management people at the other company owned stations. Members of the company’s ethics panel were also solicited.

Here’s a sampling of the comments:

• “I lean towards reporting something to put the rumor to rest but use careful language in doing so.”

• I’m not sure where you draw the line of a rumor being elevated to a “story.” I think you have to use your best judgment.  In this instance, judging by the amount of reaction you’ve received from callers, I don’t see how you can avoid reporting it.

• My judgment would be that Teddy Bruscchi has an extremely well known history of health problems.  If a strong rumor is out that he’s died, many people will be inclined to believe it.  You need to tell them the real story.  By the way, I don’t think there’s a way to tip-toe around the story. I think you clearly say that you’ve received many, many calls about Teddy Bruscchi death.  Tell the viewers it’s not true, but because of all the inquiries you wanted to get the word out.

• I agree. Instead of focusing on a sensational “death rumor”, I would report how some misinformation has caused a lot of people to be very concerned about the player’s health. So much concern that it’s generating a lot of viewer calls, many asking if he died....but it’s not true and we have confirmed he is alive and well.

The ultimate decision was left to the management of NBC 10. A healthy dialogue continued in-house for the rest of Wednesday afternoon. In the end, it was decided that we would report that we had gotten dozens of calls asking if the rumor were true and had confirmed with the Patriots that Bruschi was alive and well.