Roadracing World: It seems that some of the reporters covering the sport have gone out of their way to be critical of AMA Pro Racing. What do you think about the media coverage of AMA Pro Road Racing in 2009? Roger Edmondson: I think it is all over the place. I think we have professional journalists who make an effort to do exactly what I said earlier, they make an effort to report what took place. I think they recognize that the bulk of the public is not interested in all of the dirty laundry that we have to deal with and that we need to be smart enough not to burn down our own neighborhood and solve our problems internally. I think that we also have journalists who are not interested in furthering the sport as much as furthering their own legendary status, whether or not it costs somebody a sponsor or whether or not all the acrimony that they so much want to dwell on — and in some cases make up — is good for us or not that’s not important to them. And that’s unfortunate. I don’t know many times I’ve seen things printed that were blatantly untrue when all it took to sort it out was a simple phone call to get the answer. RW: I think I read something out there that media outlets criticizing AMA Pro Racing are claiming that they are being put on some sort of blacklist or treated differently at events. Is there any truth to that? RE: No, there is no truth to that. In fact, the media center is not ours. It’s the racetrack’s. We are not the provider of media credentials to the event. Those are entirely presented by the racetracks. The only thing that I would say is I am not interested in having a false relationship with any of those hyper-biased media that you mentioned earlier. I’m not prepared to stand around and chat with people who are looking to stick a knife in my back at every opportunity. However, I will answer questions from any legitimate media person who has a question about what we did or why we did it. And to make it easier we’re going to make sure that either Colin Fraser or myself or Roy Janson or one or two or all of us are available after each final day of activity at each event to make it quite easy for those who want to really know what took place and what our view of things are by presenting ourselves there, no holds barred, happy to answer the questions. I would much rather be able to be able to point out where people are making crap up, that they’ve had the opportunity to ask the questions and get the truth and have chosen not to. RW: Are riders who publicly express their opinion against anything that’s going on in AMA Pro Racing, sanctioned or punished by AMA Pro Racing? RE: Until Mid-Ohio, where I heard Johnny Rock Page get the best of [AMA Pro Racing Technical Director] Al Ludington’s composure, I would’ve said show me one example ever in my history when I’ve been involved in this sport or the sports car sport, where criticism of the organization has resulted in anything that affected that person’s career or that person’s ability on the track. It absolutely cannot be part of that game. A lot of people like to point to two episodes and try to come to the conclusion”¦what they’re doing is taking two and two and coming up with five, and I’ll give you examples. There’s a very widely held belief that Mat Mladin’s disqualification last year with the illegal crank was motivated by some political agenda, in part because of what took place in Tech that day. It was unfortunate. It wasn’t on my watch. I had nothing to do with it, and I had never even met Mat Mladin at that point, but to this day I think he believes and others believe that he was in the gun sight because he had been outspoken about some of the things we were discussing in the media about the future plans for the series. Just to put it on record, the top three bikes that day were brought to Tech. The Tech Inspector had a list of things he wanted to do. The first-place bike he wanted to check the valves. That happened to be Ben Spies. He checked the valves. The bike was legal, and in error — this was a critical fundamental error — turned that motorcycle loose. They turned to the second-place bike and they found a crank that looked irregular. They went to the third-place bike and found the same thing, but now it was too late to go back to the first-place bike because it had been released. [Mat Mladin finished first in both races at VIR in 2008, not second place as Edmondson alludes to in his example.] There’s a thing in law and there’s a thing in motorsports management that’s called ‘Chain of Evidence.’ Once you turn the motorcycle back to the team you are no longer able to go back and look at technical issues. So Mladin was not singled out. I wouldn’t doubt that the Spies bike had the same illegal crank because all three of the Yosh bikes ran so much alike and they were prepared very much the same. But that’s an example people use today that we try to shut up Mladin. The other one is Jamie Hacking at Fontana. Jamie was never, ever called out or called in for any critical comments he made about us or about our racing or about me or anybody else on my staff. Jamie let his emotions get away from him in the press room, that had sponsors and sponsor families and press members and press member families and other people associated with the racetrack there and used some language and exhibited some behavior that was simply not professional. And we felt we had to take action. And it’s worth noting, I think, that we took the same action when one of our staff members [Ludington] let his emotions get the best of him in a public forum. And we’ll do it again. That’s a long answer, but no, is the critical, important thing. No, this whole idea that we threaten riders with any kind of sanction over comments is just ludicrous. It’s never happened, and not one person could ever stand up and say where it has. To be continued…