The St. Louis Cardinals’ given reasons for refusing Outsports’ press credential requests to cover Christian Day at the team’s game on Sunday, July 30, continue to fall apart.
Cardinals spokesperson Chris Tunno told Outsports reporter Erik Hall that he wasn’t allowed to give Hall a credential for two main reasons: 1) MLB forbade him from credentialing Web sites, and 2) the Cardinals only credentialed journalists looking to cover the team or its players.
Yet for the last three seasons, Tunno has personally credentialed a Web site — Boom.lgbt — to cover not the team or players, but to cover a single, annual unofficial “Pride” event and, in 2014, the performance of a gay chorus.
Each credential received by the journalist, Colin Murphy, included his name, the name of the outlet (Boom Media), and the words “Press Credential.” Boom Media’s only publication is its Web site, Boom.lgbt.
“Since 2014, #Boom Media has requested credentials directly through the Cardinals communications office for our then LGBT Pride Night, which was actually a group night with Just John and Pride St. Louis, and were approved,” Murphy told Outsports.
All of this flies in the face of the reasons given to Outsports by Tunno, who rejected our request by saying, “Major League Baseball and its member clubs do not credential web/blog sites. … Major League Baseball and its member clubs credential only those media wishing to cover teams and their players, where a theme night would not fall under that category.”
The Cardinals’ credentialing site does not reflect any of this alleged policy. Outsports has also scoured MLB’s credentialing site and has not seen any ban on Web sites or anything that prevents the credentialing of media to mainly cover an event at a baseball game.
In addition to Boom.lgbt being credentialed by Tunno himself for three straight seasons, Outsports has been alerted to blogs that have been credentialed by the Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Dodgers, refuting Tunno’s false claim. Outsports has also been credentialed for a game in the last 18 months by the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Tunno did not respond to a request for comment.
No doubt the Cardinals refuse the credential requests of media outlets on a daily or weekly basis.
Yet it continues to become clearer to me that Tunno and the Cardinals gave reasons for the refusal that were totally false, as shown above.
I hope Tunno and the Cardinals issue Outsports an apology for misleading us and Hall about the real reasons for the refusal of our credential request. We never asked for false information about MLB policy, we just wanted the truth. As professionals in the sports media, I think we deserve the truth.
