SOMETIMES a mistake is just a mistake. Correct it. Learn from it. Move on. Sometimes a mistake begets a dilemma, in which the competing choices are not just unappealing - they are wrong.
A reader and a lacrosse fan e-mailed me complaining about The Cavalier Daily's lacrosse coverage. Two players - two important players, Shamel and Rhamel Bratton - were suspended for the then-top ranked Cavaliers' game against Stony Brook, which was ranked fifth. The Cavaliers had beaten the Seawolves 10-9 the last time they had played, in the 2010 NCAA quarterfinals, so it would be reasonable to think the absence of Shamel Bratton, an All-American midfielder, might affect the outcome of this game. Nevertheless, there was no mention of the suspension in The Cavalier Daily.
The person who brought the problem to my attention learned about the suspensions while watching another lacrosse game on television. He learned that the Cavaliers had won in overtime and that the team was down two players because of suspensions. He could not find anything on The Cavalier Daily's website, but searching the Internet taught him the Bratton brothers had been suspended for violating team rules.
"I understand with recent events that the school would not want to draw undue attention to negative news about the lacrosse program, but considering two important players were suspended for a game, I expect a good news source like the Cavalier Daily to include this information," the fan wrote. "I wouldn't expect a full investigation of what prompted the suspension of the two players by the paper, but such a glaring omission - not even a mention in the two articles about the game (a preview and a game summary) - makes me wonder how good the reporting is and whether the paper under influence of the athletics department attempted to reduce bad publicity of the lacrosse team.
"As a lacrosse fan, leaving out any mention of the Bratton brothers not playing leaves unexplained factors involved in the close score of the game and in the lack of scoring by either brother in the box score. This constitutes simply bad sports reporting."
Well, yes. It does.
"I looked into the issue," Editor-in-Chief Jason Ally told me, "and unfortunately it's a case of bad reporting ... It turns out the person who wrote the brief recapping the game did know about the suspensions but incorrectly thought it wasn't relevant to the story."
Ally allowed that the person who wrote about the oversight "is right in that some people may not have appreciated negative coverage of the men's lacrosse team, especially because of recent events, but this is something we should have reported."
This would not have been negative coverage. This would have been coverage of something negative. There is quite a difference. Unless someone at The Cavalier Daily goaded the Bratton brothers into whatever action resulted in their suspension, it is ludicrous to blame the newspaper for that bad news. At least one commentator even put a positive spin on it. Matt DaSilva, writing for Lacrosse Magazine Online, said that by suspending the Bratton brothers for a game against No. 5 Stony Brook - and by earlier suspending goalkeeper Adam Ghitelman for a game against another top-20 team - Cavaliers' coach Dom Starsia was asserting control. Furthermore, by winning both of those games, DaSilva wrote, "the Cavaliers have proven that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
It is not unheard of for an athletic program to suspend a star player, but usually the player is forced to sit out during a game that does not matter that much. The Cavaliers were playing the Virginia Military Institute after Stony Brook. The Keydets are unranked and Virginia handled them easily. The coach could have suspended the Brattons for that game. But he did not. In DaSilva's eyes, that had two positive effects. It told some star players they are not going to be treated as if they are indispensable. The wins taught the rest of the team that those stars really are not indispensable.
When The Cavalier Daily failed to report the Brattons' suspensions, it created another problem. Reporting the suspensions after they were done would just look silly, maybe even vindictive. The editors' response was to wait until there is another story in which the suspensions will be relevant - if someone else on the team gets suspended, for instance, or if there is a feature story about the Brattons.
I decided to take care of that for them here, but I expect the suspensions will be mentioned again. I do not believe the paper is "under [the] influence of the athletics department," as the person who wrote to me feared. But I can understand why someone would wonder about that. This case seems to be a simple screw up. That is not a good thing, but it is not impossible to overcome, either. I am confident the reporter will not make a similar mistake. And I am thankful someone brought this mistake to the paper's attention.
Tim Thornton is the ombudsman for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.
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