Troubling Pujols Discussion on ESPN First Take

I was watching ESPN First Take this morning, and I was taken aback by what they were saying in their first issue of the day. Skip Bayless was talking about a ridiculous topic, is it fair to suspect Albert Pujols of using performance enhancing drugs. Didn't we have an issue like this about a month ago that fueled a war between the blogosphere and mainstream media? Every person in the main stream media that had an outlet found a way to destroy JRod of Mid West Sports Blog for such an "Irresponsible Article". Not only did I find the topic on First Take ridiculous, I found their answers to the question shocking. Take a listen.

This is one of the biggest contradictions I have ever seen by people who are supposed to be "journalists" of the mainstream media. We spent the better part of two weeks talking about how responsible journalists can't throw around performance-enhancing drug speculation unless they have any proof. People like Ken Rosenthal were angry that people could publish speculation without backing it up. Now, we have people of the mainstream media (ESPN, major newspapers, Fox Sports, etc.) doing the exact same thing. If a blogger said or wrote the same exact thing, they would be shunned by every reporter on television, or in print. Now that people like Skip Bayless basically said, on ESPN, that he will not rule out the possibility of Pujols using PED's, you expect the people who write blogs to just not discuss this issue at all?

This is the exact reason why JRod of Mid West Sports Blog wrote the blog post that he did, because people were discussing Raul Ibanez, just like Skip Bayless and the 2 Live Stews were talking about Pujols. In his article, he never said he thought Ibanez took steroids, in fact, he stated that he hoped Ibanez wasn't taking performance-enhancing drugs. However, he acknowledged that Raul's numbers raised his suspicion, just like Pujols raises Skip Bayless's suspicion. They both stated the fact that so many players before them have been thought to be clean, and then turn out otherwise. Therefore, if you were one of the people who chastised JRod, you need to be just as upset with Skip.

However, this won't generate the buzz that JRod's article got, because this isn't a media vs blog issue. I feel that the media vs blog was the heart of the discussion about a month back, even more than the steroids issue itself. Face it, bloggers and people of the mainstream media have resentment toward each other. Maybe it's rooted in jealousy; bloggers are people who want to be people of the mainstream media, and people of the mainstream media don't want fans to read blogs instead of their articles in the paper. Whatever the divisive factor is, I feel that it is completely unnecessary. The sports world is better when you have blogs that can entertain the fans, but not be taken as seriously as a legitimate mainstream media reporter. But now, we have one of those legitimate reporters doing the exact same thing that mainstream media thought was unacceptable for a blogger. That is definitely a troubling contradiction.