Buster wags the finger at his MSM brethren

This was a surprising passage to read from Buster. I'm thrilled he wrote this. Really. It's about time someone from the MSM is saying this, particularly the parentheticals:

Morris did nothing to erode the credibility of Ibanez. He only posed questions that are reasonable, because we've all seen aged star after aged star insist that they were innocent, only to be proven that they are liars. Like Charlie Brown, fans like Morris have had the proverbial football yanked out from in front of them time after time.

Only now, instead of Bonds and Sosa and Palmeiro and McGwire, it is Ibanez who is propping up some big numbers in front of them -- and is anybody surprised when there is skepticism?

(As a note: Some of the mainstream media outrage to the Jrod column was fascinating, because some of the same writers who have said they will never vote for a player they suspect of using steroids are saying it's wrong for others to blog about their own suspicions of players' steroid use. Think about the laughable inconsistency there.)

Ibanez insists he's clean, and we have no reason to doubt his word. Assuming he is clean, the circumstances are wildly unfair to him. But those elements were not put in place by Morris, who just happens to be part of a generation that does its communicating via e-mail and Twitter and blogs -- rather than through word of mouth, as a lot of writers did in the late '90s and the earlier part of this decade, as they stood alongside batting cages and speculated on who did steroids and who didn't.

My own standard as a journalist is that I won't speculate, in print, on who does steroids and who doesn't, at least without proof. I don't think any news organization should.

But if Morris and others do so, after being lied to time after time after time, you really can't blame them.

Bravo, Buster.