Deadspin: "The AP Is Gay for Stupid"

Whatever you think of the NCAA rules, a violation of them is still news. I know you won't be happy until a story says "USC was found in violation of the NCAA's sham rules..."

 

So should journalists report on all violations of public laws and private rules? Catch speeders cops don't catch? Police drug users? Crackdown on people taking too long of a lunch break at the workplace? Shame people breaking a town's new law prohibiting wearing green pants on Thursday? The mere decision that someone breaking the NCAA rules is "newsworthy" is based on some underlying and subjective judgment about what merits reporting.

 

So how would you handle UConn men's hoops being banned for one season from postseason?

How would you handle USC's violations under Reggie Bush?

How would you handle Ohio State and the Sweater?

Ignore all of the above?

I've had to cover such cases and did so not because I thought the "violators" were bad people. Rather, the sanctions affected the ability of a team to perform on the field.

 

Completely different than what I'm talking about. In my cases, journalists acted as an auxiliary enforcement agent searching out people violating the rules. In your cases, you reported after someone else already discovered them. The acts didn't affect the "ability of a team to perform on the field", the sanctions did.

 

Or you may be bullied by people who don't like you. Even if you're straight.

 

"Say whatever you want. Believe whatever you want. But you're wrong, and you're wrong because we say you're wrong. Oh, and since we disagree with you we'll put you out of business and brand you as a homophobe. We don't care how great the apple pie in this place is."
Yeah, say whatever you want. Go right ahead.

I have no idea who Peter Wolfgang is, whether he's extreme in his views or not. For all I know he thinks dinosaurs didn't exist and the earth is 5,000 years old. But it seems to me, in that quote in the story, he's just saying "don't be so quick to drop a potentially destructive blast on somebody for the simple fact they don't believe what you do."
He didn't come across as a ranting, raving asshole. It seemed measured, a reminder that beliefs work both ways. Hell, it almost sounded live-and-let-livish.
One of the quickest ways to destroy somebody's reputation in the 21st century is to find some platform and call them a racist, homophobe, bigot or some combination thereof. It's rarely disproven before the damage is done, and there doesn't seem to be much interest in discrediting the bomb-thrower. Those are words that ought to be used with the most extreme caution.
I believe that is what Peter Wolfgang, whoever he is, was trying to say.

 

I had never heard of the guy until reading this thread but to me what he's saying is that there are other groups in society that are victims of bullying.

As the uncle of a niece with special needs that seems like a pretty solid point to me.

Pointing this out apparently gets you branded as a homophobe in this enlightened era however...

 

Has anyone seen the videos? Do they in some way portray anyone who says they feel homosexuality is a sin is homophobic? If the videos themselves attack people with these "traditional values" like that, then this could be a legitimate issue to be raised in the story. If that's the case, then the question to me isn't subjectivity; it's that the writer did a poor job describing why he was addressing the issue in the story.

 

There's some merit to your worldview, but it's a lot more grueling than you think it is. For example, if it's not the NCAA exploiting the athletes, does that mean you're more comfortable with the free market doing it? If you want street agents prowling Texas suburbs to find 9-year-olds they can "develop" into linebackers, like they do in basketball, by all means, defend that system, if you want. Just know what goes with it. Do you think there's such a thing a 9-year-old traveling baseball team because <i>nobody</i> makes money off it?

The NCAA is a governing body. Like your local police or Roger Goodell, it has established authority. It may be evil, it may be benevolent, or some combination of the two, but it's established, and relatively consistent when measured against, say, the mercurial nature of human emotion. Yes, it's polished its own cup. Yes, while profits explode in college football and men's college basketball, the athletes don't get a salary (although an athlete at, say, Oregon leads a pretty swank life). You see that as a fundamental injustice. I see it as quite less than that. Not quite always a "good thing." But not bad. Indeed, the NCAA and all the sports it's managed over the decades have led to an explosion of professional sports opportunities other nations can only dream of, carried out in settings more plush and beneficial (in terms of education) than you'd see in other nations, where the "pretense" and "hypocrisy" of the NCAA doesn't burden teen athletes. Why do you think so many foreign athletes come here to American universities?

And so it is with so many other sectors of society. You don't like the Fairness Doctrine on the radio? Fine. Then you'll get a handful of conglomerates buying up all the radio stations and pumping anti-Obama rhetoric 24/7. The only way to wrest control from them is buy the stations (not likely) or build more (very costly). You think the AP and newspapers have bought into an archaic notion of objectivity that must be put to sleep? Fine. So let's get another Tommy Craggs to take the exact opposite point of view of the real Tommy Craggs so we have two of them yelling back and forth at each other. Each has his own truth, each accuses the other of lying, and the "right" answer boils down to which one argue his side better on a given day. If Craggs is a humanist/relativist -- which his work suggests he is -- wait until you create the fundamentalist version of him. And you won't have to create him. He'll just come along. And he'll have acolytes.

If you dump the "pretense" of practiced, imperfect objectivity, just know: Something has to fill that vacuum. To presume it'll automatically be the kind of enlightenment you'd prefer -- without any of the exploitation you don't -- is faulty.

When the objectivity of TV network news was assaulted as a mild-at-best liberal bias in the 1980s, we got Fox News, the most pernicious, unsavory news organization America has ever known.

We also got the Tommy Craggs of TV - Keith Olbermann.

Look who won that battle.

And I say all this agreeing with Craggs in this instance. I'm practicing objectivity. I guess newspapers taught me that.

 

It says it's important to end homophobia in sports. Some other alright things.

http://www.uconnhuskies.com/allaccess/?media=318158

And maybe the best thing for people who want to help those with "traditional values" would be to stop associating the phrase with homophobia and all sorts of other unpleasantness. If you try to reclaim the phrase with good intentions, that would help. (And you can debate the traditional values links to homophobia, but as long as you allow yourself to be "the other side" involving anti-homophobia PSAs, well golly it's there).

 

After watching those ads, I can't see how the "other side" needed to be represented. They basically said they don't want kids being ostracized or called names for being gay. No mention of anything else that could be considered an attack on "traditional values." Injecting the idea that conservatives are bullied for their values here is forced and awkward, but is it really an indictment of journalism as a whole or just a poorly written story?

 

Some people say that gays are actually pod people from Jupiter. We'll leave it there. Coming up next on CNN...