Jouganatos: (Ethical and Unethical) We need to Stick to the Code

At the beginning of the movie, "Goodfellas", young Henry Hill is busted for illegally selling cigarettes out the back of a car. Upon going to court and refusing to rat out any of his friends he is greeted by known mobster Jimmy Conway (Jimmy Burke in real life if we wanna get technical).

After being acquitted of the charges Jimmy reels Henry in close to him and utters the mobster code, and one of the most famous lines in the history of the film.

"Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut"

Fast forward to my Freshman year at Sac State and I was learning my own version of an unwritten code in reporting. Covering the Men's basketball team was one thing, the team posted a rather unpleasant record that year. But it is in that time covering the team where I met my version of journalism Yoda. There in the row of seats sat this tiny man with coke bottle glasses and a baseball cap. Andy Furillo became my friend for life in that one season. It was also Andy who gave me the code that we as journalists all live by.

"Report the facts, check your sources, and never spread false information"

At the time I met him he was just my friend Andy from the Sacramento Bee. Fast forward to last night and the whole sports world now knows him as Andy Furillo, the reporter who mentioned DeMarcus Cousins' brother Jaleel in an article he wrote last Saturday and set off one, big Boogie Bomb. Of course no one in the City knew about this whole ordeal until Andy's employers, the Sacramento Bee, released video footage of Cousins confronting Furillo in the Kings' Locker Room on Monday.

In the video, DeMarcus is seen in nothing but a towel confronting Furillo about mentioning his brother (Monday was the first time Cousins saw Furillo after the article was published). The video shows Boogie towering over the Sac Bee columnist pointing his index finger at him while teammate Garrett Temple tries to diffuse the situation.

"You say whatever the f*** you wanna say about me but don't ever mention my mother******* family" Cousins says as he veers back towards his locker.

(Can't we all just get along guys? Merry Christmas anyone?)

In the article that Cousins confronted Furillo about, Furillo wrote about Cousins and Matt Barnes problems that stemmed from their altercation at a New York night club following a 103-100 loss to the Knicks. The last paragraph is more than likely the piece of print that ended up setting Boogie

off when Furillo mentions Jaleel Cousins.

"For Cousins, this is his second late-night outing on the club circuit this year that ended badly. In May, TMZ caught him at The DrYnk in Tampa with his younger brother, Jaleel. The celebrity gossip website reported that he and his brother were trying to get into the club’s DJ area when a confrontation broke out. Jaleel wound up getting shocked with a Taser and arrested while friends hustled DeMarcus out of the place."

The Sac Bee's video package also showing an incident from last October when Cousins got mad at Furillo about interrupting him in the middle of answering a question.

"I was still talking", said Cousins, "F*****g clown".

But Andy wasn't the only one that Cousins was seen in the package having beef with. He told media members he wouldn't answer any questions as long as a Cowbell Kingdom reporter was in the locker room and demanded he leave before he talked to members of the press. It also shows a confrontation with Kingdom reporter Leo Beas courtside during warmups of a game. Why that is we still don't know but apparently Beas will be delivering a story today on why that confrontation occurred.

So now the big question. Was Andy Furillo out of line for what he put in his story about DeMarcus Cousins' brother?

Put it to you this way. In the world of journalism there's the swamp and then there is the church. Some of us do things the right way and others choose to make a name for themselves the wrong way. That's the world we are living in. Where some unknown can make a name for himself simply by "reporting" false information or bashing someone without any regard for the truth. You either live by the code or die by the code. If you get lost in trying to gain attention you will lose yourself in this profession.

Some of us who get the code live by it, swear by it, die by it. And some of us have traded that code and ability to write and record great pieces in for likes and retweets. And at what cost? Saying stuff that isn't true or relevant doesn't make a great journalist. Stories about the subject make great journalists, not the irrelevant or unneeded stories.

So that being said, no Andy didn't break code. Did he mention something that I believe shouldn't have been in the article? Possibly yes. But the subject of the piece wasn't about Cousin's brother, it was a suggestion. Maybe if you're in these clubs and nothing but trouble comes for it then maybe don't go to these places anymore? It's a suggestion. But the rebuttal would be why even bring up his brother in the first place in an article about a Barnes-Cousins problem in New York? Families of players should have nothing to do with basketball games. We need to leave the TMZ garbage to those kinds of sites. In the process of living by the code, Andy went over the line. I don't feel it was intentional but to many it was. Opinions differ on this. Some think he was doing his job, others think he was trying to set Cousins up.

Fact remains We are sports journalists, not gossip sites.

Their experiences with Boogie Cousins the same, their morals polar opposites. Andy Furillo lives by our code and is a mentor in our profession. The other in Leo Beas, known to be an unethical scumbag to many of my colleagues, would print complete garbage if it meant 18 likes on a story. One gave me the tools to succeed and the other stole my writing.

The one constant between the ethical and unethical journalists in my opinion is that they both in a sense broke part of the code. Andy's issue was he stuck to the code too strongly, and ended up reporting things that could've been left out. Beas just looks for attention so he'll write anything to make Cowbell Queendom relevant. And Boogie Cousins didn't appreciate either approach.

As journalists we need to remind ourselves in 2017 to focus on stories that don't overstep boundaries. We are sports journalists. And we need to stick to the sports aspect of that title.

Otherwise we aren't worthy of that title.

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