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UKy basketball "locks out" student paper

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Moderator1, Aug 30, 2011.

  1. Bob Slydell

    Bob Slydell Active Member

    Yeah, little stickers with Cal's face on them.
     
  2. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    Well, no, but that's not what happened here.
     
  3. Flip Wilson

    Flip Wilson Well-Known Member

    Kudos to the reporter for calling the players. He doesn't work for Kentucky athletics. He works for the newspaper. He was doing his job in confirming that the two guys were going to walk on. Yeah, he may have hurt his relationship with the basketball SID, but he did what he had to do to get the story.
     
  4. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    Yeah. I am always surprised at how willing reporters are to follow the "rules" in these types of situations.

    I followed the "rules" when I felt it benefited me and worked around them when I felt I needed to or could without causing too much of a ruckus.

    If the trainer is deemed off-limits, it's still his decision whether he wants to talk to me or not. It's not going to stop me from asking him about injuries.

    If the SID doesn't want me talking to families of players, that's too damn bad for them.

    These days some SIDs work solely to control the message and limit your access. Why play by those rules?
     
  5. hondo

    hondo Well-Known Member

    No, most of the time it's just being a paranoid control-freak asshole. And are we getting to the point where a college program goes batshit because a reporter asks two walk-ons to confirm in they're on the team? It's not like the reporter asked them for their playbooks or anything.
     
  6. hondo

    hondo Well-Known Member

    This.

    And a further point: the more a university's SID department tries to put the clamps on the media and refuse to divulge the most basic information, the more the blogs run with any damn rumor they hear ... which means the more the conventional media have to follow up on the bullshit on the blogs and maybe relax their sourcing policies and go with what's "out there." Then the SID department goes crazy, when the whole thing could have been solved by simply not being paranoid idiots.
     
  7. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    What's interesting is that the rule about never calling a player on their cell or in their dorm or at home has been in effect at some schools for well over a decade. What has never ceased to disgust me is how many reporters abide by this rule.

    If you're a student and you may live near, or even with some of the players, you're going to find things out that the beat writer would never find out.

    I forget what school it was, but I remember when this board was in its infancy about a decade ago there was a story about an athlete who was suspended for academic reasons and the coach made a comment that this player "never missed a class" and "never missed a study session" and one of the student reporters piped up and said, "Coach, I have a class with this player and he's been to class twice this semester."

    Half the people on the board thought the student was over the line and the other half thought what the kid did was great.
     
  8. As annoying as that may be, UK can do what it wants to control access to the athletes. However, that does not translate to censorship.
     
  9. JimmyHoward33

    JimmyHoward33 Well-Known Member

    Not First Ammendment, per se, because only a select few were invited in the first place, so its not a public access or informatation gathering issue.

    But the thing about not publishing anything from an interview until Oct. 1....that's almost as bad as the don't call kids rule. Both are ridiculous and the SID should grow up.
     
  10. Bob Slydell

    Bob Slydell Active Member

    It could get to the point where school s say, either players are off-limits or you can talk to them in a very limited time with us watching the interview and telling them to anwer or not answer a question. That would not surprise me at all.

    I agree, the student reporters did not technically do much wrong, but they did violate a rule in regards to access, which the school makes the rules for a resson. And you can make the argument whether it's for good or bad.

    I can see bad reporters calling athletes all the time and bothering them, which ends up making life rough for the rest of us. If I was a parent of an athlete, I wouldn't want 24-7 access to my kid.

    And the reporters can still talk to the players, just not at this invitation-only event. Did UK handle this poorly, yeah. Did the students deserve to get shutout, no, but then UK makes the rules in this case. But no way would Peevey do this to one of the big national publications, those are the ones Cal sucks up to anyway.

    And UK football is jut as bad, don't make it just a UK basketball issue. Just the way they work. I'm sure most schools are the same.

    And Mizzou, I think what the student reporter did was great.

    But this is not censorship.
     
  11. Bob Slydell

    Bob Slydell Active Member

    It's just an agreement between the school and publications. Just a way to get advance stuff early. I actually like the fact UK does this in advance of media day.

    This isn't a breaking news press conference kind of thing. The players are shuttled around to reporters set up in a big room for preseason features.
     
  12. I think this is probably being blown a tad out of proportion, BUT I will say that this merely reinforces what most of the people who have worked with him already know -- Peevy is a dick.

    I'm always surprised that so many people think he's such a great guy.
     
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