Patriots' Turmoil: Artistic License, Constitutional Protections Drive Stories As Truth Becomes Speculation

"What a vile little thing is Evil Little Bill. The way he treated Wes Welker is disgraceful. Man has absolutely no loyalty to anyone. Watch and see, when Tom Brady's talents start to fade - and they will, it happens to all of them - Evil Little Bill will ship him out as well." - George R.R. Martin

Quite obviously, Martin - the author of the novel series A Song of Fire and Ice, which spawned the HBO series Game of Thrones - is not a Bill Belichick fan, but one has to wonder if he would be had the Dark Master remained with Martin's beloved New York Jets as their head coach rather than opting out with a cocktail napkin.

No one knows for certain if Martin would have been singing a different tune, and only he knows if he had any admiration for Belichick when he was helping Bill Parcells win Super Bowls in the 1980's as the Tuna's defensive coordinator with the New York Giants, for whom the author shares the same affection as he does the Jets, but it is clear that he is less than enamored.

In fact, when the Giants ruined the Patriots' quest for a perfect season in 2007, Martin immortalized the occasion in his sequel, A Dance With Dragons, with a the passage, "The galley was also where the ship's books were kept - the fourth a final volume of the life of Triarch Belicho, a famous Volantene patriot whose unbroken succession of conquests and triumphs ended rather abruptly when he was eaten by giants."

Eaten by giants, eh? Martin loathes Belichick to the point that he pulled a Dante Alighieri and named a character - at least in passing - as a past nemeses who got what he deserved. Of course, Dante's victims were scattered all over hell while Belichick was merely an appetizer, but the course is the same in that Martin, like Dante, was apparently obsessed with seeing his enemies suffer.

The thing about writing is that artistic license affords one to create whatever inspires you, and in the case of Martin and the fantasy novels that he publishes, there are no facts to distort and the only sources that are needed are an imagination, a thesaurus and a laptop - but when writing about reality, accuracy is paramount and artistic license is generally frowned upon.

Of course, there are ways around accuracy - rather, there are ways of telling a story without having to take responsibility for said accuracy - and this through what has become known as "Reporter's privilege", a reporter's protection under constitutional and statutory law from being compelled to disclose his sources."

It's a different kind of artistic license wherein anyone can make up anything about anyone, no matter how malicious and damning it may be, and all that person has to claim is that their knowledge came from an anonymous source, and absolve themselves of responsibility for anything they write that may or may not be true.

Anonymity leads to ambiguity which leaves the reader with no choice but to believe it or not. That is where responsibility to readers comes into play, as readers tend to eventually gravitate to writers who demonstrate a level of journalistic integrity...

...which brings us back to Belichick and the way in which the media interprets his legacy.

There is news coming out of Foxborough during the New England Patriots' bye week that paints a picture of a fractured relationship between Belichick, his certain Hall of Fame quarterback, Tom Brady, and the owner of the team, Bob Kraft - but this isn't the first that any of us have heard those kinds of rumors, and the fact that the recent DeflateGate episode has left such a bad taste in the mouths of New Englanders, that they are loathe to believe the media.

If  ESPN's Seth Wickerstam is to be believed, the Patriots have devolved into a high school team where Brady is the star quarterback who bends team rules when it comes to fitness, Belichick the rule-crazed principal who thinks the star quarterback has gotten too big for his britches, and Bob Kraft the President of the Alumni Association whose meddling has turned Brady and Belichick against each other.

And why not? After all, Patriots' fans will remember a contentious relationship that Kraft had with Bill Parcells, one that came to a head in the 1996 draft, when Parcells wanted to use their first round pick to select defensive end Tony Brackens, but was trumped by Kraft who issued a unilateral decision to draft wide receiver Terry Glenn instead.

Parcells coached the Patriots to the Super Bowl that season and came within a Desmond Howard kickoff return for a touchdown of defeating the Green Bay Packers for New England's first world title, but left immediately after the Super Bowl uttering, "If they want you to cook, they at least ought to let you shop for some of the groceries."

When Parcells left, Kraft interviewed Belichick but ultimately hired Pete Carroll to succeed Parcells, allegedly telling Belichick to work on his people skills and his interaction with the media, which, Kraft noted, was contentious to the point of being hostile when Belchick was coaching the Cleveland Browns. Eventually Kraft fired Carroll and turned to Belichick, who had just accepted the head coaching job for the New York Jets.

And the manner in which Belichick resigned as the "HC of the NYJ" - submitted to Jets' ownership on a cocktail napkin - alienated him from the fan base in New York and caused a firestorm of negativity and hate in the media. And when he signed on with New England just hours later, well, you can pretty much take the story from there as to why the New England / New York rivalry is so vicious.

There is more - lots more, in fact - but what has already been presented is more than enough evidence to support the fact that the media would be inspired to start a rumor about the Patriots in general and Belichick specifically. But the question must be posed: to what gain is there for anyone concerning this story?

The answer to that is, simply, to trash the Patriots' organization in an attempt to kick them while they are "down", to use alleged squabbling between the parties to cause yet another postseason distraction for a team that has the market cornered on that subject. Consider:

Back in 2002, Bill Belichick traded quarterback Drew Bledsoe to the Buffalo Bills, which made an enemy out of some in the Boston media (Ron Borges, specifically), and the next season he released safety Lawyer Milloy, who signed with the Bills just as training camp was breaking - and the word coming out of the media on both occasions was that "Belichick has lost the locker room" and that the players hated him...

...then in 2007, the Patriots were caught taping defensive signals from the wrong area of what is now MetLife Stadium and it was rumored that team owner Robert Kraft was tiring of Belichick's antics, and then the players hated him again after he traded off defensive tackle Richard Seymour before the 2009 season, and again when he gave Wes Welker the heave ho in 2013...

...not to mention the Aaron Hernandez saga, when the media was quick to bury the Patriots for allegedly knowing about his criminal activity, but then cutting him loose when things went sideways.

The National media is well aware that the Patriots' success elicits negative emotional response from the fan bases of the other 31 NFL franchises, and sees anything that paints them in a a position of turmoil - be it by internal strife or dark malfeasance - as instant clickbait to bring millions of readers to their websites.

DeflateGate was a perfect example of the power that the media has over our lives, and how they work to form our opinions, and also how powerful enterprises such as the National Football League can publicize their agendas by feeding us what they want us to know - and with reporters empowered with artistic license by the constitution, they are able to take what the entity tells them and expound upon it without fear of reprisal.

This recent story involving Belichick, Brady and Kraft is simply another example of artistic license making the media immune from responsibility - and since these are the Patriots, the author knows that because of their past "transgressions", anything they say about the Patriots will be accepted as fact by the majority of their readers, thus giving them license to publish either fact or fiction with equal confidence.

So what, exactly, is happening with the Patriots, internally?

Probably, there is some truth to the report, but the anonymous sources cannot be confirmed, so all we have is a couple of old stories being resurrected and pieced together by a plagiaristic hack at ESPN, who knows that the fan base of 31 other NFL franchises are going to take the ball and run with it, spreading the hate and causing distraction to the defending champs.

None of us a privy to what goes on behind the Gillette Stadium doors, so for a reporter to quote so many anonymous sources causes one to question the legitimacy of his tale, as being an example of he said-she said, circumstantial evidence that wouldn't hold up in court, nor does it hold up to those who think for themselves.

And that's what this is all about. Reporters have a job to record history, and as such also have a responsibility to history to ensure that what they are reporting is accurate - and if they are allowed to go about their jobs unchecked by the truth, will history hold them to their words, or will they be excused with the fallacy of being fed bad information and therefore are blameless?

The media has a responsibility to record history, not to make it up as they go along - and with stories like this buoyed by evidence that cannot be substantiated without breaking the law concerning anonymous sources, one has to wonder if artistic license has had a hand in making up the history books as we know them today?

After all, embellishing the truth is now the national pastime.