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2019-2020 Toronto Maple Leafs General Discussion

Nik said:
I think this is why these plans for restarting leagues are in trouble. They all sort of work under the guiding principle of the players basically acting like monks and being confined to their rooms for months at a time.

Players are going to go out, do risky stuff, contract the virus...and then potentially make it so the league needs to be shut down for weeks again.
And with the level of COVID in the States it's a non-starter now. It's amazing how rushing back to business means less latitude to actually do business.
 
I think clearly most of the US has moved on to considering any further deaths as acceptable loss of life at this point, with the economy being a bigger concern and I don't think that's an attitude unique to trumpers.

It will only be the NHLPA that will put the brakes on anything at this point.
 
https://twitter.com/simmonssteve/status/1274411602515824640

Steve Simmons is mad that more people aren't talking about his big scoop.
 
And he?s getting dragged by actual journalists about ethical integrity, reminding him that Ekeziel Elliott?s agent confirmed to the press the diagnosis. 
 
herman said:
Is this a privacy violation

I haven?t thought this through completely and i?m curious about people?s opinions. (I?m also super-bored.)

How does this relate to revealing player injuries?  We also regularly hear about players who have cancer or other ailments.

In this case, there is some public interest in knowing about covid prevalence. We might want to understand whether we should be supporting an nhl reopening or not.

Where should we draw the line here and why?
 
princedpw said:
herman said:
Is this a privacy violation

I haven?t thought this through completely and i?m curious about people?s opinions. (I?m also super-bored.)

How does this relate to revealing player injuries?  We also regularly hear about players who have cancer or other ailments.

In this case, there is some public interest in knowing about covid prevalence. We might want to understand whether we should be supporting an nhl reopening or not.

Where should we draw the line here and why?

The difference is where the information comes from. With injuries, it?s usually from the team, the player, or the player?s agent; or it?s speculation based on observable, publicly broadcast events - and its job related, in that it occurred at work/training for work. In this case, it did not come through any official channels or observation, not was it a job related medical issue, which changes the calculus. That makes this quite likely a privacy issue.
 
The season is paused and this was not incurred in the Phase 3 bubble (or even the Phase 2 pod). It?s newsworthy for the league that a player tested positive, but who the player is should be irrelevant. And so it is for the Senator that tested positive and the three Tampa players and additional staff member that tested positive etc. Or any of the baseball players and football players.

The whining from this tabloid hack about no one else publishing a verification of his ?scoop? says all we need to know about his motivation here. There might not be a law against this specific instance, but everyone else in the industry is demonstrating where the b-hole line is.
 
herman said:
There might not be a law against this specific instance, but everyone else in the industry is demonstrating where the b-hole line is.

I found it interesting that the Toronto Star, and several other publications, reported on the "report", without giving it attribution, simply calling it "another media source", very soon after Simmons' story came out.

So if there's a line, most media crossed it, not just simmons. And quite frankly, I thought it was distasteful that attribution wasn't given, regardless of the rag that the Sun is.
 
https://twitter.com/sunhornby/status/1274466156569559040
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdllMyxg_jE
Auston Matthews joins this podcast 16 min in
 
herman said:
Is this a privacy violation

From Simmons, no.  Depending on who leaked the information to him, it potentially could be.  Journalists aren't held to the privacy standard for Health Protection.  However if a hospital employee leaked the information by looking at his chart, it could be a big issue.

Again though it's just the lack of decency to jump at releasing this information just to be the one to get a scoop and his persistent whining after the fact is humorous.
 
Bender said:
https://twitter.com/Bradm14/status/1273387980158373888
I mean just about everyone already got the hint before Simmons' 'scoop', so I think it was a hockey circles loop of info, rather than HIPAA violation.

He talks about it 5 min into his June 18 podcast.
"I am here to tell you, I will not be releasing any information on who I think, and I've been told has been involved in testing positive for coronavirus. If or if there isn't a source that talked to me that I may know from Arizona that mentioned anything, I will not be doing any of that. [...] I am not in the business of spilling people's medical records, whether it's during a normal season and someone is out with a lower body injury and I know for a fact he has a tweaked knee [...] I'm not in the business of saying that type of stuff. [...] Once the names of whoever is sick come out, if they come out, then I'll comment on them."

There's a yapper in AZ who is reaching out to media/media-adjacent folk with this information. Simmons obviously wasn't the only person who received this information.

Frycer14 said:
I found it interesting that the Toronto Star, and several other publications, reported on the "report", without giving it attribution, simply calling it "another media source", very soon after Simmons' story came out.

So if there's a line, most media crossed it, not just simmons. And quite frankly, I thought it was distasteful that attribution wasn't given, regardless of the rag that the Sun is.

This is what was distasteful to you about all this?
 
bustaheims said:
princedpw said:
herman said:
Is this a privacy violation

I haven?t thought this through completely and i?m curious about people?s opinions. (I?m also super-bored.)

How does this relate to revealing player injuries?  We also regularly hear about players who have cancer or other ailments.

In this case, there is some public interest in knowing about covid prevalence. We might want to understand whether we should be supporting an nhl reopening or not.

Where should we draw the line here and why?

The difference is where the information comes from. With injuries, it?s usually from the team, the player, or the player?s agent; or it?s speculation based on observable, publicly broadcast events - and its job related, in that it occurred at work/training for work. In this case, it did not come through any official channels or observation, not was it a job related medical issue, which changes the calculus. That makes this quite likely a privacy issue.

On top of that, I think teams have a real responsibility to fans to be honest with them about injuries. If someone like Matthews may miss a game, a team should be as upfront as possible about that before I as a consumer buy a ticket or choose to watch the game on TV.

That said, I don't think teams are under any obligation to tell us why a player might miss a game. So breathlessly reporting something like this I feel does cross a line.
 
I don't know how it works in Canada, but in the US people deemed to be "public figures" generally have fewer privacy rights.  However, personal medical info also involves a layer of confidentiality:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3228620/

Doctors are bound by this; journalists ... it's hard to say.  In any event, in this case Matthews is very definitely a "public figure" and was in the US at the time of the disclosure (so far unconfirmed) of his Covid-19 status.  If Simmons has his facts straight, he's probably on solid legal grounds ? in the US.
 
It is clearly unethical (and illegal in the US) for a healthcare worker to release information about a patient.

However, there are all kinds of situations where it may be unethical or inappropriate for someone to release information but it isn?t viewed as unethical for a reporter who somehow obtains the information to report it. For instance, in politics, insiders often release information and their bosses don?t want them to so they are unnamed sources.

In general, I think reporters should weigh potential harm vs public interest when releasing information.

So a more specific question: is reporting health information about an individual always wrong? Do people do this about movie stars or other celebrities? Is it unethical when they do? (There?s a lot of reporting about celebrities but perhaps much of it is unethical? A politician?s health is often reported on.). To me, athletes are in a similar category as movie stars. It would be kind to keep their private lives private. It doesn?t happen very often.
 

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