Well, I spent 8 years in media, most of them in sports at local and national level. I understand how media works.
I was standing right there, in Denver, when Jim Saccomano called our hotline during one of our radio shows. I answered the phone. He wasn't going to give us the promised Broncos player if we kept talking "negative" about the Broncos. You have no clue how it works. I do. I worked for the Vikings flagship in the beginning of my career. Same kind of thing happened. It happened with the Seahawks when I worked nationally. It happened with Boston College. It happens...ALL...THE...TIME.
You don't get the culture of media today. It is held to threats by teams and orgs of credential pulling, etc. A friend of mine. Nestor Aparicio had the Orioles pull his credential years ago. He's NEVER gotten it back. Why? He was too critical of the org on his radio show. Do you think he went all koolaid to get it back? Nope. He went the same direction he was going. He and Peter Angelos have quite the relationship.
What you get is what is filtered through the koolaid filter so what you end up with is exactly what the org wants you to have. You are a product of what they desire because you feed off what you are told by them.
Let's look at McGinn. Does Bob do any player interviews? Nope. So...he's not worried about locker room access. The best media guys are the ones who have burned the bridges and have nothing to lose so they can give you and unfiltered look at things. Shoot, even in their cases they still don't give you everything. Litigation is such a deterrent.
Do you think the guy who gave the Manning details to Al Jazeera really made it all up? Or...Do you think the threats of litigation caused him to recant?
I roomed with a former Minnesota Gophers hockey player. Brian Bonin was critical of the coach and that coach (Doug Woog) was at his door at 5am banging on it telling him if he ever did it again he wouldn't be seeing as much ice time and might lose his scholarship. I've talked to these Gophers players. Woog was a total control freak and the things he did not to be ripped by his players are unbelievable. You truly don't understand how things work. Why doesn't anyone speak out? Why doesn't anyone report it? If they do there goes the aura of the program. It's lost. Gone. There's a guy at the Strib who is aware of all this stuff and had a crisis of conscience about whether he should report these things. Ultimately, he just couldn't. Didn't want to irrevocably damage the program. Same things happen in Green Bay and all over. You know what they want you to know not what there is to be known.
Why do you think you see articles like ADAMS STILL CONFIDENT...blah, blah, blah instead of a real article detailing just how awful he was and how Ted Thompson missed on him? Why? Oh, because it's really "true" that Davante is going to be a star he just had an off year? That is what you want to believe and the org wants you to believe it and pushes such an agenda.
Ever wonder why most fans react so negatively to Bob McGinn? He tells them the truth they don't want to hear because they're so used to the coddling lies it incenses them to read something completely counter to what they're used to and desire. Check your ownself. It's true.
To think ANYONE who wants to win in this Packers org is happy with how Ted Thompson is going about it is C R A Z Y.
EDIT: Here's a story for you to chew on so you can see how things kinda work:
http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2004/12/locker_room_affairs.html
Ted Thompson sits on his hands per former GM: "because they’ve had 25 fricking years of great quarterbacks. Of course it works. Try it without a special quarterback."