A good reason why a lot of smart Americans are getting turned off by the media

[gandhithegreat]

Mariotti, of course, before his little midsummer drama-queen sabbatical, called Tiger Woods on the carpet after he missed the cut at the U.S. Open. Lots of sarcastic, snide, and ominous potshots about laziness, "lack of focus," "loss of desire," "complacency," etc etc., with his career probably being over. (In, of course, the first tournament he had played after his father's death).

Of course, a week or so later, Tiger Woods went and won the British Open. Oooops.

Maybe Mariotti would consider himself the inspiration for turning Tiger's career back around. ::)

The problem is that most journalists (sports writers included) are asking ****ter and ****ter questions on topics they no nothing about.

If they can spell, they've got one up on you. Either that or you're trying to connect porta-potties to the issue at hand for some bizarre reason.

no just bad spelling...

 

[shotglass]

Interesting post, Alma, but you're stretching it too far with the Chron reporters.
The judge is crossing a line that people shouldn't want crossed.

Buck, I couldn't disagree with you more, even as a journalist.

The result of leaking grand jury testimony will be that people will be afraid to testify in grand-jury proceedings. It does not serve a greater purpose than the inherent dangers, and to cloak it in "freedom of the press" doesn't excuse it.

The law was not created to indisciminately punish journalists. It was created with a reason.

 

[blackmuddyriver]

So, those who think Mark and Lance should be jailed because their sopurces took them to very center of the truth about the steroids scandal need to explain a couple things:
1. Why is it more important that the government can use journalist as a kind of arm of the police than it is getting out the truth?
2. Why was it cool when Ken Starr released 3,000 pages of supposedly secret grand jury testimony from Bill Clinton and then released the entire grand jury testimony on video? Wasn't what Starr did a basic scored earth policy toward grand jury secrecy as opposed to what Fainaru-Wada and Williams did?
3. One more -- how come nobody has denied the biggest points made in the Chronicle investigation.
Remember when the truth was worth something?
It's not that the judge did something wrong -- following the law is following the law. The point is that the current strain of right wing government we have is using the laws is wishes to use and stifling the ones it chooses not to use -- even when they are the same law

 

[DyePack]

So, those who think Mark and Lance should be jailed because their sopurces took them to very center of the truth about the steroids scandal need to explain a couple things:
1. Why is it more important that the government can use journalist as a kind of arm of the police than it is getting out the truth?
2. Why was it cool when Ken Starr released 3,000 pages of supposedly secret grand jury testimony from Bill Clinton and then released the entire grand jury testimony on video? Wasn't what Starr did a basic scored earth policy toward grand jury secrecy as opposed to what Fainaru-Wada and Williams did?
3. One more -- how come nobody has denied the biggest points made in the Chronicle investigation.
Remember when the truth was worth something?
It's not that the judge did something wrong -- following the law is following the law. The point is that the current strain of right wing government we have is using the laws is wishes to use and stifling the ones it chooses not to use -- even when they are the same law

Wow -- now there's a prime example of using ad hominems and non sequiturs.

None of that matters. What matters is this: They released grand jury testimony, then refused to say how they got it in a state that has no shield law.

 

[blackmuddyriver]

That was enlightening. An arm of the government releases all the "secret" testimony it wishes for political reasons -- no problem.
Two reporters use some secret testimony to expose the truth and we should be more concerned about their source than we are about the truth.
Let's take a looooong look at that little picture, hold it up, examine it, inspect it.
The big picture? Aw, who cares about that stuff?
The president should be thanking them publicly, as should MLB.

 

[dixiehack]

So, those who think Mark and Lance should be jailed because their sopurces took them to very center of the truth about the steroids scandal need to explain a couple things:
1. Why is it more important that the government can use journalist as a kind of arm of the police than it is getting out the truth?
2. Why was it cool when Ken Starr released 3,000 pages of supposedly secret grand jury testimony from Bill Clinton and then released the entire grand jury testimony on video? Wasn't what Starr did a basic scored earth policy toward grand jury secrecy as opposed to what Fainaru-Wada and Williams did?
3. One more -- how come nobody has denied the biggest points made in the Chronicle investigation.
Remember when the truth was worth something?
It's not that the judge did something wrong -- following the law is following the law. The point is that the current strain of right wing government we have is using the laws is wishes to use and stifling the ones it chooses not to use -- even when they are the same law

Wow -- now there's a prime example of using ad hominems and non sequiturs.

None of that matters. What matters is this: They released grand jury testimony, then refused to say how they got it in a state that has no shield law.

Federal case. There is no federal shield law. Slight difference.

 

[blackmuddyriver]

No question that the two are different.
If the point is, you can get away with it here, you can't get around it there is probably a 10 second discussion having to do with this sheild law, that shield law etc.
But if the discussion is about the big picture and what journalists in America are supposed to do, count me with Mark and Lance.
I'd like to see the newspapers representing the other point of view -- keep the truth out of our stories.
Oh, wait. They're everywhere and growing like a plague, I forgot.
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH -- All the News We Know Won't Get Us In Trouble

 

[Alma]

blackmuddyriver,

Allow me to sound entirely insane, but what is being jailed if the truth and the protection of that source is so holy? The Apostle Paul was jailed again and again. He died in jail under crueler and more unusual surroundings than today.

A lot of reporters stand around braying "I'd go to jail, I'd go to jail" when the next breath out of their mouth is "but I shouldn't go to jail..." Contempt's contempt, crime's a crime. Protect your source, go to jail, and feel the squeeze of the truth in a minimum security work program prison with petty thieves and drunk drivers. Not the first time "truth" was punished.

As a secondary argument, I'd suggest that the overuse of anonymous sources - in news and sports and even the ****ing arts sections - has hit epidemic proportions to the point where, now, reporters are quoting other reporters as "people close to the situation" or "speculation says..." Any time, for example, some college needs to hire a basketball coach, and seven names appear in the paper the next day, rest assured, it wasn't the AD handing those names out. A lot of times that was just random consensus among reporters who genuinely have no idea. In sports especially, half the news is embellished in some way, shape or form because nobody bothers to go on the record and indeed reporters see no need for the record at all.

It's sloppiness. We're not in Watergate anymore, and, for God's sakes, even Watergate wasn't Watergate. We have a press that's skilled about writing about some minor hotel break-in and Monica Lewinsky's thong riding up her ass, but we have two people in the whole nation even remotely talking sense about the Bush policy in Iraq. You've got to go to fringe magazines on both sides of political aisle to find some genuine (if slanted reporting) while the mainstream sucks the teat of blogs and the columnist rundown off Drudge. We got a sucker media, if you haven't noticed, and a lot of that is wrapped in the bull****, lazy reporting done, which, at its greatest effort, involves kneading a government leak to transcribe the story to you.

I'm not suggesting these reporters haven't done good work, or compiled evidence, or done their homework. They have, and should be commended. But the reason it wasn't done until some former track athlete got the ball rolling, and the FBI wanted to tell the media its story, is because the baseball media, in 1998-2002 was busy dicking around and waxing poetic on the great resurrection of the national pastime from its death at the strike.

Listen to the radio. What do you hear all day? Specu****inlation. Not interviews, not breaking news, but some jackass pontificating on whether Carson Palmer is or is not in a rift with his coach cause he didn't play the second preseason game that shouldn't exist anyway because starters get hurt, so let's have today's question be: When will the NFL get rid of preseason?

 

[Chi City 81]

let's have today's question be: When will the NFL get rid of preseason?

Are you Jim Litke? :D

 

[DyePack]

Damn. Other than "kneading," Alma has a post I would be proud of.

 

[Alma]

dyepack,

I meant kneading just as I wrote it. As in the leak is dough journalists press into a cookie called anonymous info.

 

[blackmuddyriver]

Somebody seems to have lost his/her place. When Alma says:

"As a secondary argument, I'd suggest that the overuse of anonymous sources - in news and sports and even the ****ing arts sections - has hit epidemic proportions to the point where, now, reporters are quoting other reporters as "people close to the situation" or "speculation says..." Any time, for example, some college needs to hire a basketball coach, and seven names appear in the paper the next day, rest assured, it wasn't the AD handing those names out. A lot of times that was just random consensus among reporters who genuinely have no idea. In sports especially, half the news is embellished in some way, shape or form because nobody bothers to go on the record and indeed reporters see no need for the record at all. "

This is making my argument. It is a reach waaaaay too far to even suggest these things in a discussion about the work of Mark and Lance. The work they did is classic stuff that could stand up against the best journalism in newspapers over the last 50 years and should be protected in a country that is supposed to have a free press, which is the issue.

Of course there's abuse, especially in sports, of the use of "sources." Much of that is being eroded by a coporate/business model emerging in newspapers that sevitaleks to defend institutions and individuals in power while avoiding any reporting that might offend anybody. We are timid and shallow, publishing for the purpose of attracting business at the cost of journalism.
There's a giant chasm between the unfettered use of sources in speculative sports stories and the vital use of sources as represented in the Chronicle stories that stand as the personification of what newspapers are supposed to be.

 

[crusoes]

I have had the great misfortune of seeing the movie "The Benchwarmers" and Sean Salisbury's in it. I must admit - I'm very surprised it wasn't an issue with ESPN, given the character he plays, given that he's in it at all. It casts real doubt of his credibility. I'm surprised no one's asked him about it.

Let's put it this way: Were it politics, his participation in a such a sickening film would make him George Allen right about now. You're talking about a guy who climbs up on his soapbox every other day to rant about integrity, and he agrees to play a guy who has, for lack of better phrase, a gimp living with him, and enjoys (God I hate saying this) twisting the nipples of his fellow coaches.

man, a double bummer. First you get the movie, then you assume Salisbury has credibility.

 

[broadway joe]

Re: A good reason why a lot of smart Americans are getting turned off by the med

I wish this was the only column that read like this yesterday. But it wasn't.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/mariotti/cst-spt-jay18.html


To sum up - this columnist, and many others, actually claimed frustration at three well-played golf rounds featuring men acting like friendly adults.

Pundits and columnists - especially this guy, who talks as an authority on absolutely everything - should tread more carefully in years to come. There will come a tipping point where lots of Americans - not just homers, but intelligent, reasonable people who quite enjoyed the round yesterday and weren't particularly saddened that no "controversy" surfaced - will say to hell with it. They'll turn off all the talking heads and start tuning to team-owned media outlets that tell them absolutely nothing but sunny BS. That's how far idiots like this could push readers, sooner or later.

The bottom line is: There doesn't need to be a flashpoint every day. There doesn't need to be a missle of opinion screaming across the sky. There doesn't need to be histrionics, psychosis, or, for God's sakes, APSE award winners taking their shirts off on Around The Horn. What happening to some of these people? Have they really all become so drunk on this little machine they can push to get their food (which, in this case, is to pop off on whatever the news is of the day) that they forget they're opinion automatons, but people making triple figures to write?

I just got around to reading the column in question, and although I agree with most of your points in a general sense, Alma, I think you missed the tone of Marriotti's column. I thought it was actually more tongue-in-cheek, essentially poking fun at the notion that seeing great golf instead of a Tiger/Phil brawl could be considered disappointing. His last graf, in which he admits to instinctively following the hype most of the time, indicates that he gets it. This is one case in which Marriotti doesn't deserve the criticism he's getting.

 

[Alma]

Actually, I think he's trying to have it both ways and play both sides against the middle, which most cynical of all. Mariotti means both sides of his arguments, just like he means it when he nails somebody to the wall, and he means it when he takes them off the wall and puts them on his shoulders.

 

[Starman]

Re: A good reason why a lot of smart Americans are getting turned off by the med

He's windsocking as usual.

 

[jgmacg]

Re: A good reason why a lot of smart Americans are getting turned off by the med




I don't think Frau Mahler-Gropius-Werfel, aka Alma, would gather us here simply to dry-snipe Mr. Mariotti - it being too easy after all - and am saddened to see the thread take that predictable turn.

This isn't just about Mr. Mariotti rattling the BB of his thesis in the empty tuna can of his skull - that's what he gets paid for. Nor is it about the quality of his writing, which is no better and no worse than most of what gets printed these days on the sports pages in our larger papers.

Rather, I presume that Alma is trying to describe for us yet another step taken in newspapering's ever-accelerating race to the bottom.

What has Alma's richly embroidered liederhosen in a bunch is the emptiness and cynicism of the very premise of the piece in question. Even taken as entertainment, this piece is perfectly dishonest in every respect.

And taken in tandem with the TJ Simers thread last week - on which half of us posted thumbs up to his insider's shtick, and half thumbs down - we can see pretty clearly the phenomenon of which we're being warned here yet again. The dumbing down of thought; the ratcheting up of noise; and the contempt on the part of the writer for the possibility of sentient, if not always sophisticated, thought on the part of his own reader.

This is a much bigger problem than whether or not Mr. Mariotti shaves his widow's peak for his appearances on ATH; or whether Mr. Simers is so tightly blindered by his own shtick that he can no longer see past it. Instead, that these men are at the top of their/our field raises for me this question: Is this the best we can do? Is this the best thinking and writing we can find to put in the paper? Are these the writers and the strategies we hold up for young writers to emulate?

If so, as I said on the Simers thread, newspapers will get everything they deserve in the next few years.

As to the grand jury and the Chronicle writers? It's the writers job to print leaked documents if doing so furthers an important story. It's the court's job to send them to jail, however briefly, for doing so.

 

[Alma]

jgmacg,

Thanks for narrowing in on the point. You've done better than I have.

I should have linked another column to start this thread, say, the one by Gene W on ESPN, which said the same thing.

What concerns me is watching reporters and columnists essentially become the Greek Chorus, idiots who sway with every twist of the plot. "I hate you....I love you!" "He stinks...he's great!" "This team's in the toilet...this team's just won it all!" "Oh the humanity...oh, what virtue!" I scan the Web and must find 20 Sports Hinderburgs every day. Max Mercy was a figure of scorn in "The Natural." We've got hundreds of them now.

 

[21]

Is this the best we can do? Is this the best thinking and writing we can find to put in the paper? Are these the writers and the strategies we hold up for young writers to emulate?

If so, as I said on the Simers thread, newspapers will get everything they deserve in the next few years.

Those papers will probably get exactly what they expect to--loyal readers who might not even pick up the newspaper but for sports, and those columnists specifically.

Mariotti's paper knows its readership....they don't want eloquence or grace or sophisticated wit. They want a loud belligerent voice who can either **** people off, or rally them to riot. He accomplishes that, like it or not.

We can wring hands over the screaming and histrionics...but the average Joe sports fan is barely picking up the paper as it is. You can look down on those readers, and say they not 'smart' enough to know what's good for them...if you're willing to concede their readership. I don't know of too many newspapers willing to do that at this point.

 

[Alma]

21,

And the average Iraqi Muslim feels trapped and angry, so Al-Jazeera shows Al-Qaida footage some late nights. Or replays of dead Lebanese bodies from Q'ana.

It pisses a few off. It rallies others to blow themselves up. Until then, they're loyal viewership.