The Steroid Nation blog has some very insightful commentary by Jürgen Kalwa, a journalist for the German national newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, on the recent Humanplasma Lab doping scandal. It seemed to me that the recent German reporting, lawsuits, apologies, and financial conflicts of interest were problematic for arriving at the truth in the Humanplasma Lab case. Kalwa discusses Germany’s unique relationship with doping and the threats to independent journalism when it comes to covering doping scandals.
But those confessions also pointed towards another element of the wide-ranging cheating scandal: the duplicity of sports journalists, especially in public television, which is funded by a system of mandatory monthly fees every German with a TV set has to pay. Their commentators had long abandoned their role as independent reporters, but had evolved into cheerleaders chasing after high ratings. Only after the debacle of last year’s Tour de France, ARD, one of the two large public television channels, installed a special doping team and gave them free reign to chase the bad guys. Hajo Seppelt became the man in charge.
Hajo Seppelt’s team was responsible for breaking the news story of the Vienna lab involved in blood doping. But his journalistic independence seems to be threatened by a variety of sources, including the Russian Mafia.
The situation is threatening the reputation of a journalist, who for years had been the only German TV reporter to actively pursue leads and stories about doping. While he insists that he has clear indications that Human Plasma practiced “blood doping in the style of Eufemiano Fuentes”, the Spanish doctor well-known for his stable of cycling clients, he still wants to protect his sources. “Russians and Ukrainian mafia members are behind this”, he said according to a report in German news daily Die Welt. “Fear [is] a constant companion.”
Source: Steroid Nation
