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Being real just isn't worth the trouble now
Published: 08:01 a.m., Tuesday, August 10, 2010
By Dan Le Batard

McClatchy Newspapers

(MCT)

MIAMI Let's say you've just finished a brutal day at work. You come out of your cubicle and are immediately met by someone asking you questions about how and why you failed. This person doesn't put in your hours and isn't nearly as informed about your job as you are, but he gets paid to question you every day inside the TV, the radio, the newspaper. And, armed with the day's results, he always gets to look right about how you do your job without taking your risks or suffering your consequences. That's the questioner's job to question you.

How annoying do you think that would get?

"What I have learned in 11 years in the sports business is that the dumbest guys in the room are always the media guys," Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban wrote on his blog last week. "Listening to the media only increases your odds of failing at whatever you are doing."

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This candor is rare in sports these days and fear is the reason. Fear for your job, fear of becoming the face and voice attached to a news cycle's issue of the day, fear of picking an unwinnable fight with a media beast that has you outnumbered. That's why so many of the answers in sports, too many, are droning cliches. Being real isn't worth the hassle.

The guys who dare do it loudest Allen Iverson, Barry Bonds, Terrell Owens, Jose Canseco become unpopular and tend to get run out of their sports as they age and tire of the fight. This is why Cincinnati's Chad Ochocinco forms his own media to eliminate the news filter clogged with the sensibilities of reporters who don't look or think anything like him. Journalism major and Dolphins quarterback Chad Pennington, honorable and professional, lectured the New York tabloids once about fairness. Once. The backlash was such that he hasn't said anything interesting since.

But Cuban does not fear. Helps that he doesn't have a boss. The NBA has fined him more than any owner in sports history, but he doesn't seem to care. Cuban is guilty of generalizing about the media, but there's truth in his accusation.

If you consume sports media, you know the best-and-brightest don't go into my profession. They become doctors, lawyers, scientists, owners, whatever. Sports tends to be the place where people go to rest their minds from heavy lifting and ...

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"Not true," says Orlando Magic coach Stan Van Gundy. "There are very smart media members and plenty of dumb asses. Same in my profession some very smart people and some dumb asses. By far my biggest frustration is what I see as a hypocrisy. The media wants us to be accessible, honest and forthright. But when we are, we get destroyed. It's like you want us to talk so you can kill us. Don't get me wrong. I don't mind if people kill my ideas. I think it's interesting when people disagree. I mean the people who say I should just shut up and coach. Fine. Then don't ask us any questions."

There are certainly benefits to having people care enough to question.

The sports trough spills money at least in part because hunger for information enhances appetite, and coverage fuels those bloated sports salaries.

But Cuban is a digital pioneer aware of the changing media, and he's right to be concerned by what surrounds him now.

It appears to be getting dumber and meaner, a vicious combination. And then, with the instantaneousness of new media merging with the insecurity of old media, the pressure to be first is encroaching upon the duty to be right, never mind just.

The result is more reckless, and less credible, than anything we've ever seen.

It leaves sports figures vulnerable and exposed in more than one way, as Portland Trail Blazer Greg Oden learned.

"Coverage is crueler because negativity sells, and it is a business," Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas says. "And you have to say being that way has paid off. But the cost is what it has done to athlete-reporter relationships and the national conversation. Bill Russell, Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali thoughtful, articulate, fighting for rights couldn't survive in today's climate. They'd get chewed up. The backlash to expressing an opinion used to be a negative newspaper column or two. Now it's a backlash that will kick the expletive out of you forever. So the smartest athletes shy away, choosing to be silent in an era when their voices are needed, and the media just goes toward the guy who isn't as smart but will say anything."

The result, of course, is that everyone involved in that transaction gets dumber.

"You hope for fair and honest, but what I've figured out is that a lot of media members aren't fair and honest," says Hall of Famer Charles Barkley. "There are hidden agendas against guys you don't like or for guys you do. It's selective prosecution."

What can we do better?

"Preparation," Cuban says. "Having some journalistic and quality standards. I can't remember the last time I had a sports interview where I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of questioning and knowledge of the interviewer. When something has to be written/taped quickly about the day's/week's events, media has no choice but to talk out of their rear ends because having an uninformed opinion and winging it is always better than choosing not to participate. Being left out means you probably lose your job. Worse still, media lives off the brands they built for themselves in the pre-blog/Twitter/Facebook era. If you were a good reporter in 2002, fans probably think you still are, and treat your opinions as facts."

Teddy Roosevelt once said, famously, "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

Let me let you in on a secret: The people covering sports, the critics, tend to be more insecure than the athletes we cover. I'll give you an example. Stephen A. Smith, ESPN's Chris Broussard and I all reported early that LeBron James was coming to Miami. As the moment arrived, all of us were terrified. Smith says he never wants to cover a story like that again. Broussard looked haunted on national TV.

And I, allegedly a grown man, wanted to curl up in a ball and hide somewhere. Just out of fear of being wrong and ridiculed.

This wasn't in the action, mind you.

This wasn't taking a big shot in Game 7. We were on the periphery of the arena, near the doer of deeds.

And we're the same guys who accuse athletes of being soft in big moments.

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(c) 2010, The Miami Herald.

http://www.herald.com/ .

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