Can sports reporting be overly negative?
While watching ‘Quite Frankly’ on ESPN, I found myself getting very frustrated. Doug Gottlieb was filling in for Stephen A. Smith for the week and Gottlieb’s style is that of many reporters today and that is super critical of any issue happening in the sports arena. It makes me wonder if anyone would really care about these television and radio sports shows if they weren’t so negative on every issue.
Gottlieb was interviewing former Cincinnati catcher Johnny Bench and it was obvious that Gottlieb was seriously leading the conversation to get Bench to say he’s mad because all the records that are being broken because of steroid use. Bench wasn’t biting as he stuck with the answer of records are made to be broken. He broke Yogi Berra’s home run record for catchers and Carlton Fisk broke his and eventually Mike Piazza broke Fisk’s record. Bench commented that players are bigger and stronger and related a conversation he had with Barry Bonds about 8 years earlier where Bonds told him that he worked out about 49 weeks out of the year. Another interesting point Bench made was that he hit 45 home runs in 1970, he felt he could have hit 60 that year. Someone that kept stupid statistics told him that he hit 54 foul balls that would have been home runs. If they weren’t all foul, he would have had his 60 home runs.
Guys like Dan Patrick, Jim Rome, Stephen A. Smith, Mike Greenberg, Colin Cowherd and almost any newspaper reporter that is getting face time on a sports reporting show are successful because more likely than not, they are criticizing some athlete for what they did, are doing or might do. Fans view a baseball guy like Harold Reynolds and say they don’t like him because he’s a suck up and won’t say anything negative about a player. Charles Barkley is loved by so many people because they know he’s going to say whatever comes into his mind. The funny thing about the negativity you hear from the successful radio personalities is that they always have every answer and second-guess every decision a person makes when they never played at the highest level. Dan Patrick used to take offense when Rob Dibble was his partner and would always let him know that he had no right to second-guess every decision a player made because he never played the game. A lot of personalities take offense when this point is brought up about not knowing how a pro athlete feels at that time.
Steroid use in sports has become the money ball in radio and television now because we can all somewhat agree that sports was different 30+ years ago and the skills were different that players possessed as opposed to today’s players have. There’s a tendency to overlook the fact that weight training was literally non-existent and injuries such as acl, pcl ,mcl, meniscus or anything dealing with the knees would keep a player out for the season. The surgical technologies of today are enabling players to come back from minor surgeries in 2-4 weeks. The dietary care that players put themselves on are improving their health much better than years gone by. It’s easy to overlook the physical aspects of the athletes of years gone by because the name of the game now is to cause controversy and keep a topic going rather than getting down to the root of the issues. Could it be said that having better medical technology is cheating compared to what players had years ago? Pitchers regularly finished games that they started 30+ years ago and that was the benchmark of greatness.
I’m just one of those people that believes something is wrong when all you’re trying to do is find something wrong as opposed to looking for the positive in something. Johnny Bench made the same comment when he mentioned how good a player David Wright and some of the other players that give you a good hard effort every night and get overlooked because people only want to report something sensational. Doug Gottlieb commented how it’s ashamed he couldn’t enjoy watching Ryan Howard hitting the ball into the river during the home run contest because he was wondering about steroids and people being on them. Why exactly can’t you enjoy the contest rather then looking for something negative to talk about on your show the next day? That’s a choice you make and for the sake of job security. Years ago, radio sports shows were about the local sports scene and you talked about how good or bad a guy was playing and not focusing on where he went the night before and how many drinks or how many women he was with. Now the story is more about the person’s personal life rather than how he can help the team. How can they actually help the team if you’re trying to figure out how you can tear them down? The days of the local sports scene are over or I should say it’s down to the high school and lower grade levels.
It could be said this is a negative article as I complain about all the negative radio and television personalities in the business. Maybe it is, but I needed to express that talking about good guys in the game isn’t something from yesteryear and at worst, we should at least compare what went on in days past to see if the players from that period are really any different from the guys of today. I think there’s just a different attitude on what we see and hear reported because of the ability to report 24 hours a day and the need to fill that 24 hour day with some type of news.
Is it just me or does negative news catch your attention whether it be a good thing or not? Is that really all you want to see and hear or is it that you are becoming numb to it and don’t even recognize that’s what you see all day? Isn’t funny too how the guys that do all the dirt reporting (Bob Ryan and Mitch Albom) seem to be the ones that want the most mercy when the tables are turned on them and dirt is found on them and they are trying to furiously apologize and hope you quickly forget their transgressions.  If you’re going to interview someone, it would be nice if you don’t have an agenda and then try your best to get them to give the answers you already were shooting for instead of them giving their own honest opinion.
[tags]sports, Bob Ryan, ESPN[/tags]
Prepared for the Bird Flu? An outbreak could kill 20 – 30 million people in 2 – 3 weeks.