History Repeating Itself? Chronicle and Bonds

I ran across an interesting account on Wikipedia of how William Randolph Hearst basically ruined the life and career of one of the top movie actors of his era - Fatty Arbuckle - by publishing "spurious and surreally vicious articles and editorials" that crucified Arbuckle by blaming him for the death of this actress he was partying with (funny how that worked since Hearst was having his own affair with an actress at the same time). It noted "the Arbuckle trial was a major media event and stories in William Randolph Hearst's newspaper empire made Arbuckle appear guilty.

Funny how life sometimes repeat itself. William Randolph Hearst III is the publisher of the Chronicle and his newspaper has been publishing a whole series of articles and editorials that crucify Bonds and make him appear guilty. He's even thrown in a book as well.

I think most people can agree that Bonds most probably took something that helped his performance - my bet is on Human Growth Hormone, which I believe has to be injected, thus making its use intentional - the main question now is intent. I'm obviously still open to Bonds eventually being found - somehow - to have intentionally taken some performance enhacing Drugs., but I want strong proof and, as I've outlined in my previous posts on this topic, I don't think they have strong proof yet.

I still cannot believe that they based (at least it seems to me they did from the excerpts I have seen) the whole book on what Bonds' mistress told them. There is no way to prove, either way, that what she said is the truth. Just because she can verify that she was Bonds mistress and told the truth on certain points that got the reporters to believe her story, she is a hugely compromised source of information. She has a book that she is trying to get published, as she is hoping to make a lot of money from selling her account of her affair with Bonds, and that taints any and all stories she may have told the reporters.

I am no journalist, so if someone with a journalism background can explain this one to me, I would be most grateful, but this is a classic "she says, he says" situation where there was only the two of them in the story and she is giving her "version" of the story. There is no way, in my mind, that she can prove anything she is telling to these reporters without a recording of some sort of these conversations, which means that she had been planning for this day for a long time.

And most of the information that I have seen attributed to her, I know that most of that can be found on the internet by searching for it. The acne problem, the testicle problem, the anger management problem, all that stuff can be found on the internet, or even followed in the newspapers of that time. I know I did. So there is no way to know that she didn't make these stories up based on information that anyone following Bonds in the news or anyone with computer skills (she is a computer graphics expert) would know.

Now I'm not saying that she is lying for certain but what I am saying is that there is no way to prove that what she is saying is true or false. Her telling the truth on one thing does not mean that everything else she says is true. And I'm funny in that way, if you are going to convict someone in the court of public opinion, you better be damn sure that you got very good sources that are unimpeachable.