Miami Herald Reporter Slams his own Paper over Palin Smears

Remember that guy who moved in next door to the Palins so he could stalk them and write a book? Well, it's coming out next week and in it are allegations that Sarah Palin had a one-night stand with then University of Michigan basketball player Glenn Rice. Rice would soon thereafter end up in Miami where he played for the Heat. Apparently, the Miami Herald has deemed the story fit to print and this has one of its own reporters - Armando Salguero - calling out his employer.

As someone who lived in south Florida for several years, I'm familiar with Salguero's work. When I was there, he was a beat reporter for the Miami Dolphins and did a good job. First up, an excerpt from the article on the Herald's Naked Politics blog that caught Salguero's ire:

Did Miami Heat star Glen Rice and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin have a fling back in the 1980s, when she was a budding sports reporter and he was a star at the University of Michigan?

The National Enquirer is reporting that Palin, a former high school basketball standout herself, hooked up with Rice in 1987 when he was in Anchorage, Alaska, for a basketball tournament.

At the time, Palin was unmarried, just out of college and working as a sports reporter at Anchorage TV station KTUU. Rice was a junior and a basketball star -– he went on to lead the University of Michigan to a 1989 NCAA championship.

If the unhinged left is attempting to prevent Sarah Palin from getting into the presidential race with stuff like this, they may only be further encouraging her to do so.

In any event, check out what Salguero had to say in an email he sent to the entire Miami Herald Newsroom:From:

Salguero, Armando [mailto:asalguero@miamiherald.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 09:57 AM
To: MIA Newsroom
Subject: Palin and Glenn Rice

The Naked Politics blog is repeating the “reporting” of the National Enquirer about Sarah Palin having an affair with former Miami Heat basketball player Glenn Rice.

It is on the FRONT PAGE of The Herald website.

So as a journalist, I ask:

Do we know this story to be TRUE? Are we certain it is TRUE because we’ve done the work or have a reasonable certainty that is TRUE?
Did anyone actually try to confirm this story before giving it Herald front page credibility? Did anyone call Glenn Rice to get independent confirmation? He lives in Miami, you know.

Is it now OK to repeat any “report” from the National Enquirer on the front page of the Herald’s website without actually reporting even one fact independently? The blog calls The Enquirer’s sources “solid.” How do we know the Enquirer’s sources — plural? And if we know the Enquirer’s sources, can’t we work them ourselves to see if they’re truly solid?

Question: Can I repeat on my blog any allegation made by the Enquirer culled from any book just because, well, if it’s in a book or in the Enquirer, Herald policy is now to assume it must be true?

There have been a couple of good Enquirer stories on athletes coming from other planets. Those are in bounds now?

If this Rice story, unconfirmed and unreported by us, can be published on our site, do the alien stories not meet the same standards?

These, by the way, are my questions relative to journalism. But there are other things at play here. The Herald, like it or not, admit it or not, is widely viewed as a liberal newspaper. Palin is a conservative.

So we put this story on our website and conservatives that read us ask why The Herald didn’t report the stories of President Obama being gay in 2007 and 2008? Those stories were in the Globe, a competitor to the Enquirer. The allegations were brought by the person who said he had a drug-crazed, gay affair with the President...

CLICK HERE to read the entire letter. I'm going to send an e-mail to Salguero, thanking him for calling out the Herald. He had to have known that he would face a backlash from readers, his employer, and potentially even Glen Rice, who is a member of the sports community Salguero reports on.

Please send him an email expressing your support as well. Send it to: asalguero@miamiherald.com

Armando gets a BIG hat tip on this one and I don't have any idea what his politics are.

h/t Free Republic