Freep to play hardball?

I'm not a cell company executive or anything, but my wife and I both worked for a particular cell company a few years ago and were told that text messages and phone records would only be released to outside parties with a subpoena. People requested this stuff all the time, and it was not up for negotiation. I'm sure there was one in the Kilpatrick case because it was a criminal investigation, but I can't just FOIA all of your text messages. It doesn't work like that. The only thing that might make this different is that they're school-issued phones, but I still highly doubt the Freep can get those records without a court order, and how would they get that with no criminal charges or investigation? EDIT: I'd also be curious to hear a lawyer's take on this.

"cell phones issued by UM to the coaching staff." I hope these guys are paid well enough to get their own cells. I know some companies will do that, or reimburse you for your purchase or something like that. I'm no attorney but I'd think that if a student-athlete uses their own cell to text the coach it wouldn't fall under the FOIA, but if a taxpayer paid-for cell issued by the U to a coach probably would? Any lawyers here?

Since it was just brought back up, I went ahead and sent this message to the FREEP... Dear Free Press, I am a teacher and use newspapers and newspaper websites in my class on a frequent basis. I often buy out of my own pocket newspapers for my class. The Detroit Free Press is the newspaper that I have used the most. It frustrates me to say that the Free Press has suffered a huge blow in my personal opinion. I feel that the Free Press has done a horrible job in journalistic integrity when reporting on Rodriguez and the recent defense of the Rosenberg article avoided the pertinent criticisms of Rosenberg’s article rather than address them. If I can’t trust the Free Press to properly report the things I know about, how can I trust the Free Press to properly report the things that I know little about? I am sorry to say that I will no longer use the Free Press at school or in my personal life, and that also includes the website. Here are some criticisms that I have with the Free Press that have not been addressed by the newspaper. Whether or not the accusations turn out to be true, the journalistic integrity was compromised by the Free Press. 1) If the article will accuse Rodriquez of breaking an NCAA rule, the rule should clearly be described – including non-countable hours. This clearly misleads the public and journalistic integrity should include it automatically. 2) Even a subpar journalist should know to ask Clemons the following questions about his testimony and then relate them in the paper: A) Several of the activities Clemons mentioned in his example are not countable hours and therefore we need to know how much time he spent doing those to see if a violation actually occurred AND B) Some of those activities are not countable hours if they are voluntary, can Clemons prove (within NCAA rules) that those hours are not voluntary. 3) The criticism is not whether or not the Free Press should have used Freshman testimony, but if the Free Press deliberately asked misleading questions and took out of context their answers. Even if the Freshman brag about long workouts that does not indicate any NCAA rules violations (non countable hours), the Free Press should have dug deeper to figure out and explain how that testimony shows rules violations or not used the out of context quotes. 4) The average college football player nationally puts in 44.8 hours a week and yet it is possible that not one of these players is breaking the NCAA 20 hour limit. If the Free Press researched they would have found this information in the NCAA report released in 2008 that surveyed well over 600 schools and thousands of players. This information would have made the report more fair and would have tipped the Free Press off to the importance of countable hours and the necessity of mentioning it in their article. 5) How can the Free Press allow Rosenberg to write a condemning article on Rodriguez when he has publicly (Huge Radio Show) and previously admitted to despising Rodriguez. 6) Why is it kept a secret how many current players made these complaints in the article. Additionally, it is highly suspicious that Rosenberg conveniently forgot how many players were currently on the team when he was interviewed on the Huge Radio Show. It seems to me that the only players currently on the team are the 2 freshmen that were misled, if the article is misleading the public as to the amount players on the team. 7) If the article will imply that the team is struggling academically due to Rodriguez and his workouts, would it not be fair to balance it out with the team’s record high GPA and the coaching staff’s efforts to boost their player’s class attendance and assignment completion? 8) The Free Press has been guilty of past transgressions against Rodriguez in example: A) condemning Rodriguez as wanting to win at all costs for recruiting Feagin, when Rodriguez booted him off the team instantaneously and did in fact research the kids back ground. B) Add to the piling on of Rodriguez with Tiller’s Wizzard Hat Snake Oil comments, when 20 minutes of research would have shown that virtually every single BigTen coach including Tiller himself had done the exact same thing as Rodriguez – which is probably why Tiller backed off as he realized he was being a hypocrite. The slander of Rodriguez by a man who clearly does not like the coach can hurt the University of Michigan, a football team that helps the state’s economy, and a man who does not deserve more slanderous journalistic attacks starting with the false shredding reports out of West Virginia. Sincerely, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Perhaps I'm being overly paranoid, but I suspect this is the first step in another propaganda volley, with "University tries to hide incriminating evidence from Free Press" showing up in future headlines.

Why are people worrying about this? If RichRod screwed up, we should find out about it; if he didn't, there's no big deal. The worst they'd be able to do is take text messages asking why arent u at practice and make them look slightly bad. By the time they come up with anything, people will already know to put the info in context, so it won't be a big deal. There's no need to recircle the wagons. Nothing new has happened. You can go about your business.

IANAL, but I am a GSI and this would raise holy hell under the FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) laws. I don't know how athletes are treated, but I can not even comment on if a student is enrolled in my class. If someone from the local paper calls me looking for any type of info on a student on mine, all I reply with is dead air. My gut feeling is that is illegal and really shady.

Didn't some knuckleheads at Arkansas use FOIA to get his text record and they found out he was having an affair with his secretary or some such nonsense. IIRC, this was around the time when Mitch Mustain was there. And as someone who has a company cellphone, it doesn't make a difference how much money I make, my phone is used primarily for work so they pay for it, simple as that.

Doug Karsch will use this tomorrow on the radio. "things found in RR texts to players"

Can you at least post the link to the forum from where you got this?

Remember this? http://www.dailymail.com/Sports/WVUSports/200801170675

this is related to the internal investigation going on? If the University has records of the texts, and were asked to hand them over to the investigators, maybe the Freep caught wind of that. Now they're trying to get the texts for themselves. I'm still waiting to see where this story came from. EDIT: If the above scenario is not correct, than this truly is nothing more than a witch hunt. Seriously Freep, don't you think you've pushed this issue enough already? You're playing with fire here.

First of all, the Free Press has already decided that they are willing to take quotes out of context. I don't think that I'm really going out on a limb when I say that they'd probably be willing to do the same with text messages. I'm afraid they'll take something as innocent as a joke (like the stuff Paterno said) and use it as "damning" evidence against Rodriguez. Secondly, there's no reason to assume that the Free Press will restrict their probe to the practice-story. More serious matters, such as Justin Feagin* could be examined. This could be very bad if, for instance, Feagin and Rodriguez had slightly more phone calls or texts in the days immediately preceding Feagin's arrest. As Rosenberg has already insinuated that Rodriguez knew about Feagin's history before he was recruited, it isn't exactly hard to believe that he would be willing to write an article stating that he chose to ignore Feagin's actions while he was still on the team and only kicked him out when he was found out. *I'm categorizing the Feagin issue as more serious than the Rosenberg story because I personally think that it is far worse for any of our players to commit misdemeanors/felonies than for all of them to (allegedly, with weak evidence to back up the allegation) practice too much. I don't blame Rodriguez for Feagin's actions, but they still annoy me a lot more than the practicing thing.

At this point, I would lock the free press and all associated press organizations out of any Michigan activities, athletic or otherwise. For that matter, if I were Jim Delaney, I would be screaming at the top of my lungs at these punks.

Let's FOIA the cell phone records of MSU, OSU, and Notre Dame. The Freep will only FOIA the cell phone records of RichRod b/c they are yet to understand the concept of reporting in context.