Jeff Burton is livid over Sunday’s SPEED TV report claiming that he and teammate Kevin Harvick were caught with altered right-front wheels in a post-race NASCAR inspection.Burton said today, “It's pissed us off. It's made us mad. It's made us very mad. We've done nothing wrong. We've worked hard (and) smart, and someone in the media who chose to use unreliable sources has tainted that. It pisses me off, it pisses my team off, and I have little patience for it.
Burton blasted reporter Bob Dillner for airing the story, saying, "Journalists have a responsibility to report the facts. If you want to pretend to be an investigative journalist, then do a full job of investigating. If a true investigation had been done, this story never would have been on the air. He would have found it to be erroneous. But he's chosen to stand his ground on half the facts. Bob's story is a fabricated story. I'm not saying Bob fabricated this story, I'm saying someone did, and Bob chose to believe someone that doesn't have the facts."
SPEED’s Executive Producer of NASCAR programming, Chris Long, reaffirmed his support for Dillner, saying, “I'm backing Bob 110 percent, and we'll stick to the story he put out there. We have no reason to believe Bob would make up anything like that. I think NASCAR and RCR need to figure out where the story's coming from. It has nothing to do with us. We just report it."
Contacted yesterday, Dillner said, "I still stand behind my story."
This isn’t the 1st time Dillner’s credibility has been called into question, and it won’t be the last. His web site “Speed 51.com” has repeatedly published one-sided stories to promote a division of short track race cars that his own company stages races for. Despite this obvious conflict of interest, the site still claims it’s a “creditable news site”.
ReplyDeleteHe’s gotten away with hiding his agenda on his short track web site for a while now, but it looks like he tried to pass one over on the Cup crowd and it bit him in the ass.
Good for Jeff Burton, someone needs to make people like Bob Dillner held accountable for their actions. That Fox is standing behind him does not come as a surprise, they are not exactly known for their journalistic integrity either.
Getting Jeff Burton pissed was doing a big thing. He is like Mark Martin, very quiet and mythological and even tempered. The media in my opinion sometimes makes too much out of too little. Maybe tnt/nbc will send Dilner and Weber over to call Camel races in the Arabian sands.
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