What follows is 100 percent true. It is from my personal perspective, but few stories ever remain impartial.
You are free to make your own conclusions from what I chronicle here.
(But when they aren't censoring people like me, they instead publish hachette jobs on the topic, much like this one courtesy of Sports Illustrated released just prior to Halloween 2010.)
Censorship by Omission
The original manuscript of what ultimately became The Fix Is In: The Showbiz Manipulations of the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and NASCAR was well over 500 pages in length. Certain edits, both for clarity and length, had to be made in order for Feral House to publish it.
Most of what was removed (with the help of The Copy Doctor) benefited both the book and its readers. However, in trimming nearly 25 percent from what I originally wrote, certain facts and stories had to be sacrificed. Few were significant, and they are not worth listing here.
That aside, there were stories and knowledge I had gained in researching and writing The Fix Is In that I simply could not include. These were sometimes unconfirmed reports, or came from sources that would not go on the record. Due to obvious legal concerns, these stories may never see the light of day. That doesn’t mean they aren’t true.
Most of those stories involve people high up in sporting world food chain, and it serves them greatly for these tales to remain unpublished. This seems like a big tease, I know, but again it’s the truth.
None of this constitutes censorship, yet what follows very well may.
Prior to The Fix Is In being published, a writer for ESPN contacted me. He was working on a story about sports conspiracies, and with my standing as perhaps the most vocal member of this growing group, he requested an interview. I agreed.
ESPN flew this reporter from the East coast to my home in the Midwest. The network even footed the bill for a nice meal. We talked for several hours, and then he flew home that same day.
As he worked on his story, I discovered that I wasn’t the only person he visited in person. ESPN was literally flying him back and forth across the country to work on this piece. Then he hit a snag. A certain former NBA player wanted to talk to him about his experiences, but for his own reasons, backed out of numerous interviews the day before they were to take place. It put the reporter’s piece on hold.
In the meantime, The Fix Is In was published and I began the task of promoting the book. I was amazed to garner as much attention as I did from sports radio stations across the country. I was even more shocked to hear how many of these radio show hosts agreed with me (Chris Ello in San Diego and Steve Czaban in Washington, DC were two of my earliest and strongest supporters).
As I built up a resume of show appearances, national coverage seemed to elude me as did some of the major media markets such as New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Chicago bothered me the most as I recognized it as my base of operations. After several failed attempts at contacting someone, anyone, in Chicago sports radio, I finally landed an extremely positive response from a pair of hosts at ESPN Chicago. Their response read:
“We would love to have to some copies of your book, it seems very interesting. Please send some to our address: [which was included] When we receive them and look into it, we can try to do many things for you such as publicize it over our show, have you on as a guest to talk about it and much more. Good luck with your sales and we are excited to have your book.”
I did as instructed, and followed up a week later. No response. I sent another friendly email making sure the books arrived. Nothing. To this day, neither of the hosts nor their producer will respond.
This may not seem unusual as these are the obstacles in promotion, yet this is the only radio program to respond positively to the book and never have me on their program (actually, there was another host, but he was fired two weeks after receiving a copy of the book).
ESPN radio in Chicago is linked directly with ESPN’s home base of operations, as is ESPN New York, ESPN Boston, ESPN Los Angeles, and ESPN Dallas. As odd as it may seem, I have been interviewed on several ESPN affiliates, but none of those that are tied directly to the corporate headquarters. All of these corporate outlets refuse to respond to me in any way, with the exception of what transpired with Chicago.
Have I been made a “persona non grata” with ESPN? Is it censorship via omission? And is it being dictated from ESPN management?
Before you laugh that off, return to my ESPN interview. Though the interviewer finally landed his wayward NBA player, then wrote and edited his piece on sports conspiracies, ESPN had yet to publish it. Months had passed. Why I wondered?
In the meantime, as I continued to promote the book, I generated interest from the Versus Network’s new nightly sports talk show The Daily Line. Having received and read the book, one of their producers emailed me:
“What’s your schedule next week? We tape segments Monday-Thursday in the 4:30p-7p range. Let me know if there’s a day and time that works for you.”
Sounded like a done deal, right? The only problem was I had to pay my own way to New York City and couldn’t arrange for the trip in that short of time. But he still seemed game, writing:
“I didn’t realize you were out of town. We typically don’t fly in people for segments like this. Let me know if you’ll be in NY and we’ll set something up.”
At that I said, give me two weeks, and I’ll get myself to NYC. He agreed, but slightly changed his tune, handing me off to a second producer who wanted to read the book prior to organizing my appearance. After two weeks of no responses, the second producer finally got back to me with this:
“Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to be able to do a segment on your book. We are moving in a direction of interviewing more athletes and less interviews with people who cover the athletes and games.”
Notice it wasn’t “no interviews with people who cover the athletes and games,” just “less.” And in this case, my interview on The Daily Line went suddenly from “come on in” to “no thanks.”
I find this odd as Versus touts The Daily Line as “conversations of controversial and out-of-bounds topics.” I think The Fix Is In more than fits that description. Yet they won’t allow me to appear, but will openly discuss betting lines of games – lines that cannot legally be bet on anywhere outside of Nevada.
Did Versus censor me? When you consider that Versus is a broadcast partner the NHL, I think you might conclude like I do that someone higher up in the Versus Network’s food chain saw what my book was about and made sure I didn’t have their pulpit to preach from.
(Of course, The Daily Line has subsequently been cancelled. Sad, no?)
Despite these set backs, two sports radio hosts were brave enough to interview me. The first was Dino Costa on his SiriusXM Satellite Radio show on Mad Dog Sports. Costa had me on his show for 90 minutes, 60 more than he originally intended.
The second was Chris Myers who welcomed me to his Chris Myers Interviews program on Fox Sports Radio. Myers was willing to talk to me for 30-40 minutes, then said once he read the book, he may have me back.
Myers & Costa were both bold enough to go where the likes of Jim Rome, Dan Patrick (whose booking producer I communicated with via Facebook, sent a copy of the book to, and then got a “we’ll think about it” without ever responding to me again), and the rest of these so-called “edgy” hosts refuse to go (including the “Mad Dog” himself Chris Russo).
Meanwhile, ESPN still will not publish the sports conspiracy piece they paid thousands of dollars for that is now nearly two years old. It is likely never to be released as ESPN effectively censors it for their corporate purposes. This is obviously how ESPN likes to operate as they recently killed a negative story about LeBron James for questionable reasons.
I realize that there are ups and downs in promoting a book. I had a very nice book store manager verbally agree to an in-store book signing, then never return my calls to schedule it. One radio station in Florida has repeatedly agreed to have me on, only to cancel and reschedule over and over again with me still awaiting a new date & time. These things happen. It’s the nature of the beast.
Yet I cannot help but believe that in terms of attempting to gain national recognition for this book that many of these sports entertainment outlets’ refusals is intentional. The Fix Is In is a threat to their livelihood. If what I wrote is 100 percent accurate when discussing which games have been fixed and why (and I can verify that 100 percent of my facts are correct), then censoring me is the best way to protect their multi-billion dollar empire.
Remember this because if it can happen to me in an attack on the world of professional sports, it can happen to anyone who dares question the system.