“Don’t make me call your mother!”
It’s a sentence many of us have heard. For most of us, it send shivers of fear straight down our spine. “No, please, anything but that,” we’d think to ourselves.
But perhaps now, professional athletes will hear this famous and familiar line from reporters.
James Reimer is the goaltender for the Toronto Maple Leafs and hasn’t played since being run into by Montreal’s Brian Gionta. The team originally called it whiplash, admitting he had “concussion-like symptoms”, but not being willing to call the injury a concussion.
So, reporter Dave Feschuk tried to uncover the truth: by going to Reimer’s mother. His mother didn’t know any more than the “average Joe” walking down the street, but she did reveal a past history of at least one concussion with Reimer and also expressed her concern over her son’s injury.
Leafs General Manager Brian Burke didn’t like this one bit, calling the move “dishonest and slimey”, and saying if he was the editor, he’d “break his (the reporter’s) nose”.
Did this reporter go too far, or was it his journalistic obligation to dig for more information and try to get the truth?
Read the Feschuk article, or watch this video with Burke, or both.
