Jim Williams: Haber and WUSA had Nats story right

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The wait is over.

The announcement Wednesday that the Washington Nationals were sold to the Lerner-Kasten group ended what seemed like an interminable wait to find out who would own this area’s team.

Meanwhile, WUSA-9 sports director Brett Haber should get the credit he deserves. Haber and his team at the local CBS affiliate got it right a little over a week ago when they claimed on air the team was going to the Lerner-Kasten group. MLB responded with a strong denial and radio and TV stations all over town dismissed it as “false reporting.”

Apparently a denial from MLB does not mean something is not true. It just means it’s not true today.

“It is a story we had confirmed through multiple sources at the highest levels of these negotiations,” Haber said. “It took months of work to get this story right but once we did we had extensive meetings internally before deciding to run with the story. Even when Major League Baseball denied the story we knew that in the end we would be proven right.”

Haber did not gloat about being right. He talked about being first because of hard work, good investigative reporting and solid sources. He spoke about the importance of the backing of all the key people at Channel 9.

But Haber’s main point throughout our conversation was people should not be surprised a TV or radio sportscaster could break a major story.

Jim Williams is a seven-time Emmy Award-winning TV producer, director and writer.

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