Quote Originally Posted by Melbournehammer View Post
in my experience they dont make up stories. they get the wrong end of the stick plenty of the time and they can write opinion pieces disguised as fact pieces, but if you are writing for a reputable paper they dont make them up. they go on a source which may not be right or might be misleading or might not know things properly. but they almost never "make up stories". making up stories is what gets them fired.

that is to say the ones that i have known (and i have known them in the political environment as well as the sporting environment) usually have a source telling them something. as i say that may be because the source is trying to get something themselves etc...

i think you should assume that there are a number of melbourne clubs who are looking closely at the swans list to see whether players can be prised away for better offers.
I believe you are dead wrong. I don't believe that there was ever even ONE credible source regarding Buddy throwing a spanner in the cohesion of the playing group. What happened was that some Mario from Doncaster rang SEN and said that he reckoned etc...etc..etc... and then journalists with a newspaper that has a reputation for not telling the truth (News Limited) write pieces saying "there are rumours that blah, blah, blah.." but they don't actually write that they have a strong source. What happens is that retired players in the media who are not journalists, then say on TV "I've heard very strongly on the grapevine...blah, blah, blah..." but actually all that they have heard is their friends quoting the rumour in the paper which is quoting Mario from Doncaster!!!!

If you don't believe that this sort of thing happens then check out these 2 fun facts

1) No white tail spider has EVER caused a necrotic reaction
2) No mobile phone has EVER ignited at a petrol station

Have fun

To save you the trouble of looking it up....in 1986 an article in a Queensland medical journal was looking at a necrotic reaction and mentioned in passing that possibly it was a spider bite. The news limited paper then ran the story as "White Tail Spiders can cause your hands to die and be chopped off." It ended up being written in reputable encyclopedias and the like. Finally someone actually did research (you know, like, science) which included more than 100 voluntary bites.

Static electricity caused by vinyl seats and and person not earthing themselves (ie grabbing on to the roof of the car as you get out) has caused many explosions at petrol stations over the years. In 2 of these the person was also on the phone. It is not physically POSSIBLE for a phone to ignite petrol fumes....totally busted on Mythbusters. From memory they ended up putting 50 phones (with live talk signal) a few cms above an open drum of petrol and they still couldn't make enough charge to cause static.