Post-Mortem

AB in DC

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Oh, and asked if he was being used as part of smear campaign against Brady and the Pats, says "I never said anything about Brady."  Ignores the "and the Pats" part.
 

PaulinMyrBch

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He could have vetted the NFL better guys. He under-vetted. Lets leave him alone.
 
What a fucking crock. Waiting for Florio
 

JGray38

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I know this whole thing has proven that we are a nation of morons, but at what point does someone finally say something so ridiculous, that you can't help but call bullshit on it? I keep wondering if we have found that moment, and we haven't quite yet. But I have hope for this little event here.
 

ifmanis5

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This story is his credabilty Waterloo and ESPN's also pretty soon.
 
He's let this turd hang out there attached to his name for MONTHS and did nothing to investigate it further. No way a Will McDonough, Ed Pope or Jerry Izenberg would knowingly have their names attached to a story that was quikly determined to be totally false (on ego grounds alone) and then do nothing to correct it. He is a total hack.
 

PedroKsBambino

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From what you guys are sharing, he is worse off for this appearance than he was before.
 
Someone is going to try to track down where he retracted it---wonder if he really did that on another platform.
 
Feels like, given what has come out since, he kind of has to say that he was used, doesn't he?  He looks like a complete moron otherwise.
 

Granite Sox

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Mort's on LeBatard's show right now. Completely weaseling out on his explanation for passing bad info on DFG. Said he never mentioned or implicated Brady... said Belichick did that during the Mona Lisa TC. Said he didn't feel betrayed because he contacted his initial source and asked for info, not that his source called him.

Also said he talked to Kraft and Kraft said the Pats' beef is with NFL, not him.

Completely disavowed his role in reporting and not correcting bad info and took responsibility for nothing.
 

ivanvamp

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Well I was somewhat sympathetic to him at the beginning of this, but not now.  All he needs to do is say, yikes, yeah, my report was wrong, and I feel terrible about that.  I was told something that was untrue.  I'll try to do better checking my sources from now on.
 
That wouldn't totally satisfy me but it would be SOMETHING.  
 

ifmanis5

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Shit happened is his answer. Unreal. You really don't want to revisit any of your origianl reporting or start over and see what you can find out? Just moving on? Total hack.
 

Dr. Gonzo

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He went on an ESPN affiliated radio show, doubled down, and the host didn't pushback? Shocking.

ESPN knew D&C were going to rip him in two regarding his tweet and initial story. If he was allowed to make that appearance Mort would have been finished as a credible reporter.

The best part of pulling out of the EEI interview is that he didn't realize what was going to happen during the interview. Someone from ESPN probably had to step in and tell him to cancel.
 

ivanvamp

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Honestly, if ESPN was a real news outlet, and one of their reporters actually acted this way, they would have fired him by now.  
 
But we don't live in an age of real journalism anymore.  This is embarrassing for Mort and ESPN.  
 

PaulinMyrBch

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I'm thinking it will only take Florio 30-45 minutes to accumulate the links needed to shoot a ton of holes in Mort's explanation. The upcoming story should be a nice concise beatdown. My money is on 6:25.
 

AB in DC

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Dick Pole Upside said:
Also said he talked to Kraft and Kraft said the Pats' beef is with NFL, not him.
 
 
Amazing that Mort is so thin-skinned that this wasn't 100% obvious to him from the get-go,.
 

moondog80

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AB in DC said:
Says that he believes nothing would have changed if he had just omitted the 'two pounds" part and just said 'significant".  Wow.  Just, wow.
I actually believe this part.
 

Stu Nahan

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He and ESPN had the whole weekend to come together on a story and this is what they came up with? Impressive. It won't matter at all. The damage is already done and vast majority of people that watch ESPN will still listen to Mortensen.
 

rodderick

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No, Mort, the deflation that occurred wasn't "significant" either. It's 1 PSI on average using one gauge and 1.3 PSI averaging both gauges. Not to mention the balls were in the range predicted by the ideal gas law. So get the fuck out of here with this "well, the spirit of what I reported was right" business.
 

moondog80

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rodderick said:
No, Mort, the deflation that occurred wasn't "significant" either. It's 1 PSI on average using one gauge and 1.3 PSI averaging both gauges. Not to mention the balls were in the range predicted by the ideal gas law. So get the fuck out of here with this "well, the spirit of what I reported was right" business.
And 1.6 using the other gauge. I think that's enough to look at and say that it's significant. And though he wasn't using it as a technical term, I believe it qualified as statistically significant (p= .05), no? The bit about the ideal gas law is true, but presumably the source wasn't saying "there's no other possible explanation". Just "our initial findings show that the balls were in fact under inflated, and not by a marginal amount."
 

cshea

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I think the most egregious report was the immediate follow up about the Colts balls being in range. It was a blatant lie and explicitly implied the Pats were intentionally breaking rules. From the AFCCG through May every Ideal Gas Law explanation was answered by the obnoxious BUT THE COLTS BALLS DIDN'T DROP! Response.
 

AB in DC

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It was only 'significant' because the report came before everyone (re)discovered the Ideal Gas law.  At that point, the 2 psi difference became absolutely huge, because the science couldn't clearly show that the deflation occurred naturally.
 

dcdrew10

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PaulinMyrBch said:
I'm thinking it will only take Florio 30-45 minutes to accumulate the links needed to shoot a ton of holes in Mort's explanation. The upcoming story should be a nice concise beatdown. My money is on 6:25.
6:03

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/08/03/mortensen-talks-11-of-12-footballs-report-on-espn-radio/

Florio was nice, saying Mort is in between a rock and a hard place. He has to watch out for his own neck but not implicate any potential future sources that those people he doesn't name will owe him some serious favors. But Florio does say there's a lot of holes in Mort's explanation. He could've been a lot more forceful; I think he was just paying Mortsome professional courtesy.
 

Marciano490

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Wait, did he really, actually, truly say he didn't retract because he didn't know how to delete a tweet or is that parody?
 

OCST

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Seems implicit in what's been posted, but no pushing from LeBatard? I can't stand him, but he seems enough of a crank that he might have rattled Mort's cage.
 

moondog80

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Marciano490 said:
Wait, did he really, actually, truly say he didn't retract because he didn't know how to delete a tweet or is that parody?
Pretty much. "I'm old, I don't get computers! Ha ha ha!"
 

scottyno

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So 2 days ago his excuse to get out of the weei interview was that he wasn't going to talk about this until the legal proceedings were over, good job Mort.
 

BrunanskysSlide

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Doesn't his line about talking to Kraft, and Kraft being angry with the NFL and not Mort somewhat confirm his original sources are from the NFL? 
 

PaulinMyrBch

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dcdrew10 said:
6:03

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/08/03/mortensen-talks-11-of-12-footballs-report-on-espn-radio/

Florio was nice, saying Mort is in between a rock and a hard place. He has to watch out for his own neck but not implicate any potential future sources that those people he doesn't name will owe him some serious favors. But Florio does say there's a lot of holes in Mort's explanation. He could've been a lot more forceful; I think he was just paying Mortsome professional courtesy.
He admittedly hasn't heard the entire radio piece. So I think he'll update it later. 
 

canderson

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ifmanis5 said:
This story is his credabilty Waterloo and ESPN's also pretty soon.
 
He's let this turd hang out there attached to his name for MONTHS and did nothing to investigate it further. No way a Will McDonough, Ed Pope or Jerry Izenberg would knowingly have their names attached to a story that was quikly determined to be totally false (on ego grounds alone) and then do nothing to correct it. He is a total hack.
(bolded mine)

Disagree. This won't phase either at all moving forward. It could be announced tomorrow the NFL is canceling all punishment and it won't make any difference.

95 or mile percent of the country thinks Brady cheated. ESPN doesn't care, they are entertainment and not the news media any longer.
 

moondog80

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BrunanskysSlide said:
Doesn't his line about talking to Kraft, and Kraft being angry with the NFL and not Mort somewhat confirm his original sources are from the NFL? 
 
No, it confirms that Kraft believes that this is the case.  Which is probably true.
 

uncannymanny

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Nothing says "big boy journalism" like dodging a contentious interview about your misreporting while saying you won't address it until after the litigation, then dropping some turds-for-excuses to a colleague who won't grill you 3 days later.
 

Bleedred

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“I will never retract that,” Mortensen said of the revised report that the balls were “significantly underinflated.”  But he admitted that the two-pounds-under report was “obviously in error” and that it “technically was a mistake” to not retract it on Twitter. (The tweet still lives.)
This excuse is the height (or width) of Euclidian Obtuseness.  In a desperate attempt to make up some plausible excuse for his actions, he sticks by the "signficantly underinflated" nonsense.   This would technically be correct in a world where the Ideal Gas Law doesn't exist.  Unfortunately for mortenson neither he nor any other of the 7 billion people on the planet live in that world, because that world is a fiction.   Sadly for him, the Ideal Gas Law does exist, and his latest explanation is as factually wrong and intellectually dishonest as his original report.  Worse maybe, because he has had 7 months to understand the issue, and he's still got it 100% wrong.     
 

Kliq

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I heard the report on WEEI right while it was happening and Holley and Andy Hart did a great job of ridiculing Mort. The "I don't know how to delete Tweets" excuse was the tell that Mort was going to be completely full of shit for the whole interview. Mort has the premier breaking news job in all of sports, he has nearly 2 million Twitter followers, for a breaking news reporter of that magnitude to not know how to delete a tweet is unfathomable. And even if he didn't really know how to delete a tweet, it proves that Mort never gave a shit about the integrity of the report because if he cared even a little bit, he would have googled how to delete the post, or asked one of the social media people at ESPN to do it for him.

He also said that he felt WEEI was misrepresenting his appearance by saying it was the first time he was going to speak publicly about the tweets, when in fact, he had spoken about it before. Um, when exactly did he do that? He cited some interview he had with Fauria before the Super Bowl, but that doesn't really count because that was before anything; the investigation, the Welles Report, etc. The public didn't know that Mort's report was inaccurate, so that interview has nothing to do with questions that are going to be asked of him now.

And lastly, Mort claiming that he didn't want to contribute to the misinformation that was already out there. I mean, he was the one who started all the misinformation! This was the perfect chance for him to explain what he did, but instead he scoffed at the idea of having to do it and then through a shot in at Kraft, who apparently controls all the media in New England and rules over it like a power-crazed despot.

And in the end, nobody will care. It won't hurt ESPN and it won't even really hurt Mort outside of New England. 95% of football fans outside of New England don't care enough about the situation to have a strong opinion on it. It is much easier to just say the Pats cheated their way to a SB, because that is the storyline most of them want to accept and they will find plenty of fans, media members and former players that agree with them.
 

NortheasternPJ

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Did Mort also forget how to post new Tweets? Even quoting his tweet and saying "Correction..." would have done it. If I were him  I wouldn't delete it, I'd post a correction.
 
Glad he's using the NFL strategy of just doubling down on nonsense. I wonder if his source Kensil told him how to do it?
 

ElcaballitoMVP

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What a joke of an interview. And now watch Mort act like this is going to put the whole thing to bed. 

A couple of my favorite quotes: 
 
 "And oh by the way, in my original reporting, (I) never implicated Tom Brady. Never implicated the Patriots. I did ask the question if Walt Anderson, the referee, followed the protocol and the league assured me he had."
 
So the league is his source? Is that what he's saying right there? It reads to me like he's saying in his original reporting the league assured him Walt Anderson followed protocol, which we know isn't the case but whatever. 
 
And I couldn't believe the balls on the guy for this one: 
 
 'And I said I'm not going to let you or Mr. Kraft or anybody do any more misreporting about this thing, so don't call.' 
 
That's pretty bold coming from the guy who's misreporting set the negative tone from day 1 that the NFL wanted him to set. 
 

Tim Salmon

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BrunanskysSlide said:
Doesn't his line about talking to Kraft, and Kraft being angry with the NFL and not Mort somewhat confirm his original sources are from the NFL? 
 
I don't think we need to look to any exchange between Kraft and Mortensen to divine that the sources were from the league.  In his interview today, Mortensen said he spoke to three people who purportedly had inside information about the gauge readings before the story broke.  Then he said, "I did ask the question if Walt Anderson, the referee, followed the protocol and the league assured me he had."  In his ESPN.com article in January, Mortensen attributed his 11 of 12 report to "league sources involved and familiar with the investigation of Sunday's AFC Championship Game."
 

Shelterdog

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PhilPlantier said:
 
I don't think we need to look to any exchange between Kraft and Mortensen to divine that the sources were from the league.  In his interview today, Mortensen said he spoke to three people who purportedly had inside information about the gauge readings before the story broke.  Then he said, "I did ask the question if Walt Anderson, the referee, followed the protocol and the league assured me he had."  In his ESPN.com article in January, Mortensen attributed his 11 of 12 report to "league sources involved and familiar with the investigation of Sunday's AFC Championship Game."
 
League sources is often used far more generally than an NFL league employee--depending on the reporter it can be an agent, a player, a coach, an owner, a team front office player.
 

DennyDoyle'sBoil

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So, where exactly is the retraction?  This link still exists with the 2 lbs. info.  It also says "inflated significantly below," but Mort's contention that he revised the report to say that instead of two pounds under appears plainly false.
 
Does anyone remember Mort backing down on the 2 lbs?  I sure don't.  That would have been huge news.
 
 
The NFL has found that 11 of the New England Patriots' 12 game balls were inflated significantly below the NFL's requirements, league sources involved and familiar with the investigation of Sunday's AFC Championship Game told ESPN.
 

EDITOR'S PICKS


  • MacMullan: Arrogance demands consequences
    With the integrity of the game at stake, the NFL should come down hard on Bill Belichick and the Pats if they are proven to have underinflated footballs, writes Jackie MacMullan.


  • More info needed before judgment passed
    Are the officials at fault? Were Indy's game balls weighed as well? More facts are needed before judging the Patriots, writes Mike Reiss.
 
The investigation found the footballs were inflated 2 pounds per square inch below what's required by NFL regulations during the Pats' 45-7 victory over the Indianapolis Colts, according to sources.
"We are not commenting at this time," said Greg Aiello, the NFL's senior vice president of communications.
 
http://espn.go.com/boston/nfl/story/_/id/12202450/nfl-says-new-england-patriots-had-inflated-footballs-afc-championship-game
 

BrunanskysSlide

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Shelterdog said:
 
League sources is often used far more generally than an NFL league employee--depending on the reporter it can be an agent, a player, a coach, an owner, a team front office player.
That's why I thought the whole Kraft part of that exchange was a little more telling.  If Mort and Kraft actually had that conversation and Kraft told Mort, "Hey, I'm really not mad at you I'm mad at the NFL for what they fed you..." and the NFL was not the source,  Mort would have either never mentioned that exchange on the air, corrected Kraft that they weren't the source, or said something to this effect during the interview: "Kraft and I spoke, and even though he has no reason to be, he's mad at the NFL."  I felt it was a way of giving up the NFL as the source without actually giving it up, even if he did it by mistake. I'm probably reading way too much into it though. 
 

Tim Salmon

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Shelterdog said:
 
League sources is often used far more generally than an NFL league employee--depending on the reporter it can be an agent, a player, a coach, an owner, a team front office player.
 
Sure, but what agent, player, coach, owner, or team front office player would be "involved" in the investigation, as opposed to merely being a source "with knowledge of" it?  When you combine that phrasing with his statement that "the league" confirmed that Walt Anderson followed protocol, I think it's fair to say that Mortensen has openly invited the inference that his information came from the league office.  It looks like he stressed the sources' involvement in the investigation to lend credibility to his initial report.  That's why I don't think he's left his handlers any room to get cute with broad definitions of "league sources."  Their best play is to do what they've been doing so far: (1) refuse to comment on speculation about the sources; and (2) bask in the glorious realization that the majority of the population simply doesn't care that Mortensen went from journalist to hack in one fell tweet.
 

AardsmaToZupcic

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His stating he doesn't understand twitter is a complete crock, checking his tweet history reveals he has used at least 5 different methods of Tweeting including his iPhone,TweetDeck,UberSocial from a blackberry,from an Ipad and the twitter website.  
If he was so unsure of how to use twitter why not just use the 1 method why all the different ones?
 

OnWisc

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Mort is going to continue making a lot of money and getting a lot of face time every week, every fall. He's not going to fall on his sword or roll over on his de facto employer over this. And it's the decision a lot of people would make. It doesn't make him a bad person, just a bad reporter.

Like SAS, Mort is now a sports-entertainment figure.

*As has been stated elsewhere, the Twitter excuse is a huge red flag that he's not going to be saying anything remotely of substance.
 

djbayko

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Not knowing how to delete a Tweet is a red herring for 2 reasons:

1) As has been pointed out by another poster, it wasn't just a tweet. It was turned into at least one news article on ESPN.com, which is still existing.

2) You don't delete a false news report - you issue a retraction. Yes, it's an artifact of the newspaper days, when deleting a news story once published was impossible. But the retraction has a more important purpose - to call attention to the fact that the report people might have already read was incorrect. A silent deletion would never "right" the "wrong".

With that being said, I'd love for someone to find those examples of deleted @mortreport tweets, which you just know are out there.