The Final Score

Many media outlets reported that RB Derrick Ward was the third Giants player out with Plaxico Burress and Antonio Pierce the other night when Plax shot himself.

Looks like it's not so. Our Tom Rock called me a while back to confirm that it was Ahmad Bradshaw (photo) who was at the club with AP and PB, not Ward.

Here's what Ward said after Sunday's game, courtesy of TR:

"I didn’t even know what happened until the next morning. I wasn’t with Plaxico or Antonio that night. I was out having dinner with friends, and that was about it. Last time I saw them was that afternoon right after practice.”

In my 19 years working for New York tabloids, I have tried to follow a simple rule: don't repeat something if you don't know it's true. Just parroting what another news organization reports in an "unnamed source" report is bad journalism. I trust my sources and the sources of my Newsday reporter bretheren. I can't trust another newspaper's sources because i don't know who those sources are.

Most of the time sourced reports turn out to be true.

Too often, though, they don't.