AL JAZEERA UNDER FIRE AFTER SOURCE BACKS OFF PEYTON MANNING DOPING CLAIM:
Charlie Sly, the source behind the Manning allegation cited in the investigative report, “The Dark Side,” posted a video late Saturday saying that he had been videotaped without his knowledge or consent by Al Jazeera’s Liam Collins, a former British hurdler.
“The statements on any recordings or any communications that Al-Jazeera plans to air are absolutely false and incorrect,” Mr. Sly said on YouTube. “To be clear, I am recanting any such statements and there is no truth to any statement of mine that Al Jazeera plans to air. Under no circumstances should any of those statements recordings or communications be aired.”
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Mr. Sly told ESPN’s Chris Mortenson that he was purposely dropping famous names and giving false information to Mr. Collins in order to “determine whether this guy was legitimate or just trying to steal some knowledge about the business.”
Mr. Sly said he was a pharmacy intern in 2013 at the Guyer Institute in Indianapolis, where Mr. Manning received treatment for an injury in 2011. The Al Jazeera report identifies Mr. Sly as a pharmacist.
“When I was there, I had never seen the Mannings ever. They were not even living there at that time,” Mr. Sly said. “Someone who worked there said they had been there before. That was the extent of any knowledge I had. I feel badly. I never saw any files. This is just amazing that it reached this point.
The Al Jazeera report alleges that the Denver Broncos quarterback received shipments of human-growth hormone [HGH] mailed to his wife, Ashley Manning.
The Denver Broncos quarterback told ESPN that he had received legal therapy under Dr. Guyer, including nutrition and oxygen therapy, “but never HGH,” adding that, “My wife has never provided any medication for me to take.”
Both the Denver Broncos and Mr. Manning’s former team, the Indianapolis Colts, issued statements Sunday in support of the quarterback.
“Knowing Peyton Manning and everything he stands for, the Denver Broncos support him 100 percent,” the team said. “These are false claims made to Al Jazeera, and we don’t believe the report.”
The statement continued that, “Peyton is rightfully outraged by the allegations, which he emphatically denied to our organization and which have been publicly renounced by the source who initially provided them.”
Jason Cole of Bleacher Report tweeted, “Obviously haven’t seen the Al Jazeera report on Peyton Manning, but idea he’d have HGH delivered to his wife as a cover seems pretty stupid.”
Related:
“You’ve got a global — a set of global networks — that Al Jazeera has been the leader in, that are literally changing people’s minds and attitudes…Viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it’s real news…You may not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads, and the kind of stuff that we do on our news…Which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners.”
—Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 3 March 2011, as quoted in an NPR article headlined, “Clinton Lauds Virtues Of Al Jazeera: ‘It’s Real News.’”
At least at the moment, this news isn’t looking too real.
(Via Hot Air.)