Tennis Journalist Feud: Flatman vs Rothenberg

[Cry]

So this morning, tennis journalist Ben Rothenberg (who contributes to the New York Times) called out fellow journalist Barry Flatman (who contributes to BBC and Wimbledon publications) for tagging players in tweets while criticizing them. Most journalists simply type in the name of the player into the tweet but when you "tag" a person they are notified that someone has mentioned them in a tweet.

Flatman called out Karolina in the middle of the Dubai final for not giving it her all, to which Rothenberg took offense and replied:

Flatman then sent a private message to Rothenberg, which Rothenberg posted on his own twitter for everyone to see:

Flatman then tweeted out a series of tweets that sort of admit he shouldn't be tagging players in all these negative tweets (the Pliskova one was just the one that set this feud off. People have been pulling lots and lots of Flatman tweets that fall into the same category) but just isn't very good at twitter. At the same time, he calls out Rothenberg as the guy who "assassinated" Neil Harman, the former Wimbledon journalist who was fired for lots and lots of plagiarism. 

People seem to be mainly on Rothenberg's side. Do you he is right, that's is not professional or even necessary to send unflattering appraisals directly to the players? Seems like a fair point considering the fact that people have quit the sport entirely because of what people say to them on social media. And people also aren't crazy about the fact that Flatman is defending and praising a guy who is a well-chronicled plagiarist.

[nadals]

Rothenberg 1 Flatmam 0

[Cry]

I'm on Roth's side. I find it EXTREMELY hard to believe that Flatman doesn't fully understand twitter given that he has tweeted 8,638 times and has been on twitter for 5 years

[RU90]

Lol, Flatman just dug himself into a bigger hole with those responses.

I've met Ben and he seems like a pretty nice guy, so maybe I'm biased here, but he did nothing wrong in exposing that plagiarism. Good of him to bring that to light, or who knows how much longer Harman would have repeatedly plagiarized.

As for the social-media aspect, there's a lot of abuse and garbage out there by gamblers and crazies already. I am of the opinion that you should never write something to anyone that you wouldn't say to his/her face. But of course, this hiding-behind-a-keyboard trolling has been going on ever since message boards and forums were created. It's always been one major drawback of the WWW.

Criticism is fair when it has grounds for basis, but in case, it doesn't. Why would you essentially call someone heartless for a MTO? Ladies often have to go off court for treatment or assessment even when the injury isn't serious. So that was unfair criticism.

[Cry]

First of all, I don't think it was fair to call Karolina heartless in the first place. She was in her first Premier final ever, on the brink of the top 10, had great wins this week, especially after fighting for so long against Muguruza.

Second, I think professional criticism is okay, but I agree that it's unprofessional to tag the players in the tweets. Do they really need to be shown that?