Idiots Write About Sports

You will not find a more sensible article about the Barry Bonds story than Joe Sheehan’s piece at Baseball Prospectus.
If you’re not a BP subscriber (shame!) you won’t be able to read it, so let me quote a key part:

That Bonds is the face of [BALCO] is fortunate for the media, which can get away with a lot more rolled eyes and lowered standards than it might otherwise. Bonds’ relationship with the media is a huge part of this story… because there’s not even a pretense of objectivity any longer… Bonds won’t provide information, so the media substitutes his disdain for it and hand-waves the rest.
The fact is, Bonds was correct in much of what he said yesterday. The media does keep running back to the same stories over and over. There are larger problems in our society than athletes using performance-enhancing drugs. Whether steroids are cheating isn’t the black-and-white question it’s been presented as, not in a game that turns a blind eye to the kind of amphetamine use baseball has seen.
…Bonds is facing these questions in part because… his grand-jury testimony, and that of others, was leaked to the media. That is the biggest crime in this situation to date, and almost no one has addressed it with the same gusto as they have the connections between Bonds and his personal trainer. Where are the investigation and the indictments for that crime?