So, finally, some of the putrid truth about Metha is beginning to come out. He was an all around self-serving, vengeful and unethical asshole, harassing and threatening people to boot and pre fabricating BS with no substance behind it to get attention. That is quite the opposite of doing his job, even by NYDN standards. Good riddance. He will never be a sports writer in this town.
Interesting story here. To summarize, Mehta, who criticized JD for some time, approached JD's son at a baseball game. This was reported, and his NFL creds were revoked as a result. Jets beat then asks McDonald to cover the Jets while they are attempting to see if they can get Mehta's creds back. To cover for Mehta meant serving as a proxy him, so that McDonald would get all info, fully convey yo Mehta, while Mehta still writes articles under his name. McDonald felt the arrangement was inappropriate, and aired it out on twitter. Backlash ensued and Mehta was fired. The most disgusting thing for me was the JD's son bit. While he claims the interaction was innocuous, which I am sure it was, just the fact the guy went so far as to make a point to seek out the 11 year old kid and have ANY interaction with him is absolutely ludicrous. It's like he wanted to point out to JD that he knows where his kids are, a mafia sort of tactic. He crossed the line here and really should have been gone right away. McDonald just highlighted this story really. Is it unethical to bring some no name young guy to convey you all info on temporary basis? Probably not the best practice, but I would imagine this type of stuff goes on all the time, where you want a name on the report, while someone else does dirty work. And not just in reporting, pretty much everywhere. Not the end of the world. I am however glad that McDonald brought the baseball game incident to light - Mehta has no business being a reporter after that.
As a MA guy, yet Jets fan since the early 80's, I didn't have access to the NY papers until a bit ago...Having only followed Cimini since his tenure at ESPN, I can honestly say that he's been pretty fair and accurate in his reporting from my take. Jets have stunk and he's been very professional in reporting the same...From what I've been reading it wasn't that way from his time at NYDN. The Boston Globe is pretty good but has it's columnist who's job it is to rile up the masses...Understanding that is the case for most major metro area sports pages, it certainly seemed like Manish crossed some ethical boundaries to get the information to make his opinions....As people pay for those papers/internet stories, you owe them the facts and your honest opinion. When those facts and opinions are shaped by who helps you and who doesn't, you get fired and rightfully so.
I’ve read someplace that he took a picture of the kid too, even if that’s not true as you said just approaching a kid like he did should be a career ending offense. Thankfully it looks like it is. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
I just can’t for the life of me forgive out why he would do that. The only thing that makes sense to me would be he ran into his kid by chance at a game, idk how he’d be able to ID his kid, and took a pic of him and his son together saying something funny like, “you’re two favorite ppl together LOL.” Ya know, something funny like that. Which obviously wouldn’t be a big deal..but that said, it doesn’t seem like that was the case! I had a maroon
Ding dong the witch is dead. Look, each individual allegation might seem ridiculous on us face because none of us can imagine why he would do something like approaching JD's son, or threatening Folks wife, or misquoting any number of players. But this appears to be a real pattern here. I've always felt Mehta was a troll, and I am not unhappy to see him gone.
He approached JDs son because he'd gotten away with so much unethical behavior in the past that he figured he could get away with that too.
lol, Manish went on Boston sports radio to finally tell his side of the story. https://985thesportshub.com/2021/01/12/manish-mehta-toucher-and-rich-interview-jets/ I won’t completely dismiss some of his defense, but there’s still some real stretches in here, particularly when Manish accuses Joe Douglas of being paranoid that the Jets would fire him for being seen speaking with Manish… never mind that he was fresh off of a new 6 year contract. He maintains that the team didn’t care for him being ultra-critical of the team, which isn’t necessarily hard to believe, but he loses me there because literally every beat writer has to be critical when the team has been god awful the last five years. The difference is that Manish’s criticisms are unwarranted personal attacks. The hosts try to cover most of the recent allegations against him, but major drop of the ball here for not asking about the Adam Gase burner account. He explains his side of the Joe Douglas' kid at the baseball game incident, but it's still a weird thing to do.
None of this explains the reactions of co-workers, that email that his ex co-worker tweeted out, or the flood of other beat reporters shitting on him on the way out.
Exactly. It speaks volumes that there wasn't another beat writer who came to his defense. Here, Manish also doesn't deny that he cursed out Jenny Vrentas, as reported in the Washington Post article, when asked.
You should not be able to suppress a journalist by smearing their reputation with distortions and embellishments, and sometimes just flat-out fabrications, just because you don't like what they are reporting and writing, and that's exactly what happened here. The NFL, frankly, took the Jets' word for it without ever talking to me or my editors about whether any of those claims were true. Playing the victim to gain sympathy. Other beat writers have criticized the Jets without suffering similar consequences.
Yeah, there's been so much smoke around Manish over the years that even if some of it isn't true it's prob safe to say he's not a great guy.
Lol the one radio guy saying it's weird about the whole kid thing. Ughhh yes! Manish is a clown and interesting the Jets been trying to get rid of him.
Sure does speak volumes that nobody went to bar for him!! Suprised the hosts didn’t ask him about that.. Adios Manish!
While I agree with you it comes down to how Manish treated people. If he wasn't such an ass to others then people would have stood up for him. Very similar to Lance Armstrong. Lance did the same thing every other cyclist did but got treated much much more harshly because of the way Lance treated and attacked others. If you live your life walking over others you are gonna get treated differently when karma catches up with you.