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Antisemitism Update: Dave Portnoy No Longer Sending Alleged Barstool Bottle Service Perpetrators to Poland
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Over the weekend, some people went to Barstool’s Sansom Street spot and ordered a bottle service sign that said “fuck the Jews.” One of the alleged perpetrators is a now-suspended Temple student, who Dave Portnoy offered to send to Auschwitz as a learning of experience of sorts. That invitation has now been rescinded:
There’s not much of an update beyond this. If you were following along on Monday, you saw the video Portnoy released mid-morning, accusing Action News of pulling a “bait and switch” during an interview. Portnoy alleged that the unidentified WPVI reporter* accused Barstool and white men of being responsible for the incident that took place inside their own bar. Portnoy took offense to that, showing in his video a portion of the contentious interview.
From what I can tell, Action News did not actually use any of this 1v1 discussion with Portnoy. On the 4 p.m. news, Barstool was the third story, and they ran what’s called a VO/SOT in the news industry, or video/sound on tape. Basically an anchor reads over a piece of video, then there’s a soundbite, and second portion of an anchor read. The bite in this case was from a member of, I believe, the anti-defamation league or a local Jewish organization. But no clips from Portnoy and no toss to a reporter. It was read by Brian Taff.
I missed the 5pm, 6pm, 10pm, and 11pm (little kids and all of that), but looking at the Action News website, the only update is a generic story written by the digital staff, which also does not have the new Portnoy sound in it. It appears as though they just scrapped the interview entirely after it went sideways, but if you saw something I didn’t, holla.
*We got a bunch of emails, and there are a bunch of tweets out there, claiming that the reporter who did the interview is TaRhonda Thomas. For what it’s worth, you can’t actually see this person on Portnoy’s laptop, so this is a product of people listening to the voice and trying to match it. The emails/tweets may be 100% true, we just don’t have any way to make a visual confirmation here. What I can say, with 99.9% confidence, is that the reporter is not Katie Katro. Katro worked the Sunday night shift and was given the byline on the original story, but in order to interview Portnoy she would have had to go home, sleep for 6 hours, turn around, and come right back into the station. That’s highly unlikely, even in the news world where you have the shittiest of schedules.
Brian Hart transcribed the original video if you want to check out his thread:
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com