Score one for MLB TV

Give some credit to the MLB Network for its weekend coverage of the Alex Rodriguez story. Sports Illustrated broke the exclusive early Saturday that A-Rod had tested positive for steroids in 2003. Other media outlets quickly jumped in, as did MLB TV, which broke in to scheduled programming and went live the rest of the afternoon with interviews and commentary.

It would have been easy for MLB to soft-soap the story, considering that as a subsidiary of Major League Baseball its primary job is to promote the league and the sport. But MLB dived right in, with commentary from SI contributor Tom Verducci. Verducci, the same writer who ghosted Joe Torre's recent controversial book The Yankee Way, said that "journalism is journalism. We should cover this story the exact same way someone would cover a political scandal." Bob Costas followed with a lengthy interview with Selena Roberts, one of the SI writers who helped break the story.

We certainly don't want to give too much credit to MLB Network; after all, it's easy to jump in the pool when everyone else is already in, and we could ask why a network with all those resources didn't break the story in the first place. But, the fledgling network deserves some props for at least attempting real journalism as opposed to the typical sugar-coating.