Al Jazeera: "We're Not Making the Allegation Against Peyton Manning"

"Do you have specific evidence that Peyton Manning himself has ever taken HGH?" -@CarsonDaly asked AJ reporter https://t.co/BB4e040S2B
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) December 29, 2015

It's usually not a great thing to break a story and then once the news cycle catches up to it your reporter goes on television to defend it, but Al Jazeera reporter and narrator Deborah Davies is now officially part of the Peyton Manning/HGH story. Al Jazeera's documentary on performance enhancing drugs in sports, "The Dark Side: Secrets of the Sports Dopers," was a deep dive into the scuzzy world of doping, anti-aging clinics, and the celebrity hangers on who do all of the behind-the-scenes legwork. The documentary was essentially a hidden camera sting operation, using a former olympian to pose as a prospective client and in the process they unearthed a pretty big name: Peyton Manning.

The main source of information was an intern at the Guyer Institute in Indianapolis named Charlie Sly. He was captured on video saying the following: "All the time we would be sending Ashley Manning drugs. Like growth hormone, all the time, everywhere, Florida. And it would never be under Peyton's name, it would always be under her name." Sly retracted this statement and the Guyer Institute has denied Sly was an employee while Manning was with the Colts, even though an employee told Davies that Guyer was in fact an intern while Manning was still with the Colts.

This whole timeline is necessarily shady and confusing, because that is the culture of doping in sports, but it's important to note that there is absolutely nothing in the documentary connecting Peyton Manning to HGH use, except for Sly's claims quoted above. And even those claims are essentially meaningless without the viewer taking the necessary step to assume Manning then used the drugs allegedly shipped to his wife.

This is exactly how it was presented in the documentary, first by providing heavy-handed fan interviews talking up Peyton's character. Sly then talks about sending Ashley Manning HGH. The documentary does not point out that there is no evidence connecting Manning to HGH use, it merely says Sly—who repeatedly talks about all the football players who use HGH—"raised one final astonishing question." Only after leading the viewer to the assumption that Manning was using his wife to cover up his HGH use, Davies read a denial from Manning's agent, as well as Sly's recantation.

In the aftermath of this obviously huge potential bombshell about "one of the most beloved American sporstmen," Al Jazeera has come under fire and Davies appeared on The Today Show this morning to defend the reporting. She, quite accurately, said that the allegations in the film were not directed at Peyton Manning. At no point does anyone say Peyton Manning used HGH. At no point is any evidence provided that Manning used HGH. It's simply the the elephant in the room.

This is a film about an anti-aging clinic illegally providing HGH to individuals, among them athletes, but Manning's involvement became a major part of the narrative and it simply is not nailed down. At all. Whether you care about PED use—especially in football, and chances are you don't—is one thing, but this is at best a horribly edited and narrated part of the documentary. At worst, Al Jazeera just let Charlie Sly, who is essentially a drug dealer trying to sell his stuff, lead viewers to a conclusion it did not clarify until days later, in a way that is only technically defensible.