Going, going, gone

While Kenny Rogers berated a cameraman for doing his job, he just illustrated the strained relationship between media and athlete, says Dan Nied

By Dan Nied [send email]

Somewhere in the cesspool of multiple sports television stations, thousands of sports websites and hundreds of major metro daily newspapers, the relationship between media and professional athlete has been breached, dulled, grayed and severed.

The media was once rightly looked upon as the most efficient (and only) outlet for franchise publicity. It still is. But now the media is looked upon by too many players as the enemy.

And sometimes they are.

In turn many media members blatantly play favorites with players and teams and lose sight of their own journalistic integrity.

The most telling sign of strain is when accolades are thrust upon those simply doing their jobs the right way. So how loudly does it speak that the NBA has a yearly award, voted on by the beat writers, for its most media-friendly players? And what does it mean when a media member like ESPN’s Peter Gammons or Sports Illustrated’s Peter King is praised as fair?

Shouldn’t we expect all the media to be fair?

But so rare is it that an athlete genuinely has a good relationship with reporters that there must be a trophy involved. And almost as rare is it that a columnist or analyst won’t pick sides.

Athlete/media relations took another hit Wednesday when Texas Rangers pitcher Kenny Rogers shoved two Fox Sports cameramen - sending one to the hospital – and then threatened to do the same to others.

The cameramen’s mistake was filming Rogers walking to the field before Texas’ game. They were just doing their job.

Earlier in the day, a friend from Detroit called me and asked what I thought about Pistons coach Larry Brown – who has of late been the victim of a full-blown media orgasm about his immediate future with the organization. It turns out my friend had read a piece by a Detroit columnist that painted Brown in an unusually harsh light.

The back story to that piece is that after a recent playoff loss, the columnist indicted Brown for having a bad game from the bench. After the Pistons won the next game, Brown sarcastically confronted the columnist at the post-game press conference.

Since that time, that columnist has not had a decent thing to say about Brown, possibly leading to that unflattering column that had my friend up in arms.

These are not isolated incidents, just recent examples from both sides.

The truth is that without the media professional sports don’t exist, at least not on the grand level we’ve all come to know. Without the media, sports interest would peak at the grassroots levels of high school and little league.

But then, without professional sports, our daily newspapers would be drier than three-day old toast.

It used to be a cozy quid pro quo relationship where everyone benefited and quietly went on their way. Athletes would play and then talk to the sportswriters who would write their game stories and profiles for the fans to eat up in the next day’s paper.

And that was it.

Now an athlete can divide the media into the ones that like him and the ones that don’t. And that athlete would probably be entirely correct about his division. But then, by doing that, the athlete is insulting every fan that wants to hear what they have to say and, in turn, pays their salary.

However, the media are insulting the fans too.

Because of 24-hour blanket coverage, the media are forced to find stories to keep readers and viewers interested. The results of that are analysts going crazy over a prospect’s “upside” and sports lists that drag on for days and, sometimes, a column that smears the name of and athlete or coach. A single reader is more important than a fairly-treated athlete.

The relationship is strained, and most likely will only be strained more. But until athletes and media begin to understand each other again, the real losers are the fans.