Having commented a few days ago that the media owe Marion Jones (and the public) an apology for jumping to conclusions, it’s refreshing to find at least one person who gets it, and that is Bill Plaschke of the LA Times. In his recent article Drug Testing Still Works, Plaschke comes clean and says he was hasty in pronouncing Marion Jones a drug cheat based on her A test.
So I have to say, Plaschke gets it — kind of. And he asks an important question, will anyone ever believe drug testing results again? From where I see things it seems that the people who are doing the best job to cast the credibility of drug testing in doubt are people like Dick Pound, who is supposed to oversee WADA, not make pronouncements on the guilt or innocence of athletes who find themselves enmeshed in the anti-doping process — or for that matter even the comment on those athletes’ test results.
Pound has made a very interesting comment regarding Jones’ results — he conceded that the EPO test is subject to interpretation, implying that perhaps the initial interpretation may have been incorrect. For a moment or two I thought that the old geezer might be coming to his senses. But then an article appears in the Washington Post reporting that he has requested documentation from the lab conducting Jones’ tests to make certain that “things were done properly.”
So now it appears that Mr. Pound is defending the reliability of the EPO test, and casting into doubt whether the lab in California did things right in Jones’ case. Let me get this straight, Dick: When you find a result you like (even before these results are confirmed) then the labs are absolutely 100-percent accurate, but when you find a result you don’t like you immediately assume that the lab did things wrong and try to intimidate them so that in the future they won’t offer up results that differ from your warped, twisted view of the world? Your job is to ensure the fairness of the system, not to run a kangaroo court that convicts all who are suspected regardless of the facts.
Pound reminds me of the congressman who voted against impeaching Richard Nixon and famously said, “Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind’s made up.” (That was Earl Landgrebe, former congressman from Indiana’s Second District, who was trounced in the 1974 congressional elections by an upstart professor of history at Purdue University, Floyd Fithian. But I digress.)
The whole point of testing B samples, Mr. Pound, is to verify that the initial testing was done correctly and that the results agree. When they don’t then the case is over. It’s done to protect the athlete’s rights and to ensure the quality and fairness of the system.
But that’s assuming that the test procedure was done properly in both cases. One can perform a test wrong and get wrong results. And it’s even possible to repeat the same mistakes and come up with a wrong result on the B sample. Which is to say that if the B sample agrees with the A it’s not a sure thing that the athlete doped. That’s why there’s more to the process than just the scientific (or not) testing.
So, getting back to Bill Plaschke’s article, he says that he’s going to be more careful in the future how he’s going to cover doping stories. At the same time, he still pronounces Floyd Landis guilty, because Landis’ testosterone tests came back abnormal on both the A and B results. His exact comment is this: “Floyd Landis can say nothing to me from my handlebars, because he was still guilty.” (Plaschke offered to give Landis a ride down LA’s Harbor Freeway on his handlebars if Marion Jones’ B sample came back negative. Have a nice ride, dude.)
Umm, Bill, go back a couple of paragraphs. It’s still possible that Landis is innocent and that the test results themselves were incorrectly performed or incorrectly interpreted. Point is, he’s still entitled to the presumption of innocence until this process is over. Since you say you’ll question some of the tests from now on, how about starting with a little research into the whole testosterone testing process? It’s not as cut-and-dried and ironclad as you might hope. And if Landis is exonerated, whatcha gonna do then? Run a 100-meter dash with Marion Jones on your back?
Then there’s Jemele Hill, the Orlando Sentinel columnist who clearly doesn’t get it. Let’s see if I get this right, because Marion Jones has associated with people who’ve doped in the past, then even though this test didn’t get her, she still might be a doper? What about all the other tests she’s gone through that have come back negative? Oh, right, “Jones’ negative test doesn’t mean anything to me, because some of sports’ most obvious cheaters consistently have passed drug tests.” Like who?
Jemele, you say you believe a person is innocent until proven guilty. But what I see you saying is that if you hang around with people who are guilty, you must be guilty yourself. That doesn’t really follow.
Fifteen years ago I worked for a man who had a notorious uncle. How notorious? Well, let’s just say after my boss’ uncle died, his aunt had regular vistors on Friday afternoons. Well-dressed men dropping off brown paper bags filled with money. And she neither wanted nor needed their money. I’m not mentioning his name, as I don’t want to cast aspersions on the character of my ex-boss, who is also a good friend. That’s because even though his uncle was a notoriously bad person, neither my boss nor his father nor anyone else in their family was like this uncle, who was the black sheep of their family.
But Jemele, your attitude that bad company implies bad character would convict all of this man’s family based on one bad apple. And it would convict me, too, for working for someone related to this person.
Hanging around bad characters only calls into question one’s judgement. It doesn’t automatically make Marion Jones or anyone else a bad person for doing so. Same goes for convicting Lance Armstrong of being a doper, merely because others around him may have been. No test has ever proven Armstrong doped. Ever.
Jemele, because you’re a journalist you have an obligation to be fair, even if your job is as a columnist writing your opinion. More so than an average person because your work reaches so many. Being closed-minded and sticking to your closed-minded opinions enlightens no one — including yourself.
One thing’s for sure, Jemele: I would hate to have you sitting on my jury if I was ever accused of a crime. I may kiddingly say that a good way to get out of jury duty is to say, “But Your Honor, the cops wouldn’t have arrested the defendant if he wasn’t guilty.” Unfortunately, you seem to believe it.
