ALL THE SPECULATION THAT'S FIT TO POST

With all the blogs, message boards, talk radio, cable news scrolls and instant access to information in general, we now live in a world where rumor has replaced the lead as the focus of what constitutes news.

You no longer need a reliable source; you just need a source, which is “close to the situation.” Basically, your source knows a guy who knows a guy. It’s an urban legend approach to news gathering. Over the years, Eddie Murphy became Mike Tyson who became Michael Jordan who became Will Smith who became LeBron James who gave a lady a bouquet of $100 bills for a misunderstanding in an elevator. [citation needed] In sports it’s banned substances. Over the years, uppers became cocaine, which became ephedrine, which became steroids, which became HGH as the speculative lead to run with until we find out exactly what player X took. If you have a cold or are on a diet, there's a good chance you coudn't pass a sports drug test. Genetic Enhancers the media can't wait for you to get here soon enough.

Every major news outlet has adopted this philosophy of blurring the line between news and rumor. This is to the detriment of actual stories in an actual news cycle. There is no such thing as a “probable” fact, that’s just a hypothesis which needs to be proven which is just an opinion based on a subjective, poorly calculated assumption. That’s not ‘news’ worthy to be broken.

Read the rest of Nyce's featured article on the faniq.com after the jump.