Is Racing Media part of the Problem or Solution?

After Past The Wire published its piece on the Ortiz brothers and the cockfighting video, someone in racing media reached out privately. They told us the column was spot on. That they were honestly appalled at the lack of caring from their fellow media members and the industry at large. That they kept looking for others to write something. That they could not sleep over it.

They understood immediately what the story was. What it meant for a sport already under relentless scrutiny over animal welfare. Why the silence from their colleagues was inexcusable. They said so, directly and without qualification.

They wrote nothing.

Not in November when the video surfaced and the implications were immediate. Not in December when the industry’s silence had itself become a story. The story moved when external pressure made silence impossible — when an animal welfare organization, PETA, forced the issue, when a national newspaper published photographs. It did not move when the facts demanded it.

In this industry, facts alone are rarely sufficient. What is required is pressure from somewhere that cannot be ignored. Past The Wire has never had that kind of institutional weight. What we have is an obligation to say what we see, when we see it, regardless of where it lands.

We raise this not to settle scores. We raise it because the pattern is the story. The cockfighting coverage did not fail because nobody knew. It failed because people who knew made a calculation, quiet, considered, professional, that the trouble wasn’t worth it. That the story might go away. That someone else would take the heat.

Private outrage and public silence is not journalism. It is the definition of the problem.

The Sound of Silence is not just a song. On this story, in this industry, it was a choice. Made by people who understood exactly what they were looking at and decided, collectively, that looking away was the safer bet.

Past The Wire was built because that bet keeps paying out in this sport, and someone had to stop taking it. We are still here. The story is still here. And the Preakness hasn’t even run yet.

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Silence Like a Cancer Grows: