The New York Times has been on a bit of a roll with its coverage on the preferential treatment afforded to members of Florida State University’s much-heralded football team.
Earlier this year, Walt Bogdanich wrote a lengthy piece on the school’s flawed investigation of Jameis Winston, the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback who was accused of sexual assault. Last month, Bogdanich teamed up with Mike McIntire to report on how Tallahassee police have routinely “soft-pedaled allegations of wrongdoing” by a number of different Seminoles players.
The Times continued that tradition on Friday with another story by Bodanich and McIntire. The two scribes reported that P.J. Williams, a starting cornerback for the defending national champions, was slapped with mere traffic tickets for what was initially labeled a criminal hit and run. It was the last straw for Seminoles fans.
Legions of FSU diehards fought back on Twitter, dutifully flagging links to the latest story as spam.
Florida State fans keep flagging our story on P.J. Williams’ hit-and-run as a phishing link. http://t.co/hJDd2lxIDQ pic.twitter.com/zGaGl8OPYb
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) November 14, 2014
Eventually, the piece was inaccessible from Twitter, and those hoping to read the story were instead met with this message:
TPM reached out to spokespeople at the Times and the FSU athletic department, but did not immediately hear back from either.
