Who Cares About Pacman: The Systemic Problem with Negativity in Today's Media
LZ Granderson (who is one of the more consistently-good writers at ESPN) has an article up, asking why we keep talking about Pacman Jones.
He makes the excellent point that Jones isn't really that great a football player, and his popularity is completely media-driven -- he didn't get famous for acts on the field, he got famous for acts off it. He stayed famous because the media kept bringing him up, kept cramming him down our collective pie-holes as the NFL deliberated (repeatedly) about whether to let him play or not. There isn't even this much sensationalism about legitimate stars who may or may not be allowed to keep playing -- Michael Vick was banned from the league summarily, before his conviction, when news about his killing of dogs broke; nobody considered banning Ray Lewis when he was accused of killing an actual person, and the media didn't talk about it except for the occasional joke. Those players are actually good, and their suspension would actually have a significant impact on their teams (although in the case of the Falcons, it didn't turn out so bad).
What does Pacman mean to the Cowboys? Well, he's the 4th string corner back, and he's an "electric" punt returner who has almost certainly lost his speed. Consider that even Devin Hester has lost his effectiveness after a couple years, Dante Hall lost it after a couple years ... every great punt returner loses it after a couple of years, as their speed drops just a couple of tiny notches and they can't hit the seams as hard as they used to.
Consider also that those players were actually playing and staying in football shape, and they still lost their top-end speed. Pacman has been fighting bodyguards, drinking, and (most importantly) not playing football for almost two years. How in blazes does anyone expect him to still have the same explosive speed he did in 2006? Seriously? Is it just that nobody's seen him play since then so they don't realize he's no good? Is it just because ESPN constantly describes him as "explosive" and "talented," enough that we actually start to believe it?
True, it's not every day an athlete shoots himself in the leg, but how often does an athlete pull over to change a tire for strangers? We can't make athletes contribute to society, but we can decide which athletes to focus on. Why is the negative piece the one with legs -- pun intended -- but the positive piece fizzles as a quirky blip? Is our appetite to see the mighty fall so great that earnestness no longer has a place at the table?
I don't know if it's just the appetite to see the might fall, though I'm sure that could be part of it. What's more likely is that journalists take their heaviest criticism when they're seen as being friendly to those in power. If you're not attacking the powers that be, then you're drinking the Kool Aid and shouldn't be trusted.
If a journalist reports on Tony Romo changing that tire, or about the time he invited a homeless man to watch a movie with him, well, that's just what the NFL wants us to hear. That journalist did a bad job because he's just parroting the company line; he becomes less trustworthy.
If he reports about the Brooks and Dunn golf fundraiser, or about Dunn helping families to buy their first home, again, he's just spewing the NFL's party line.
It's happened to me, and I'm not a journalist, nor do I have an audience large enough to include the fringe crazies who yell at you for everything and call in to radio talk shows and write complaints to the FCC. But when I say something that isn't completely critical of a team, I'm accused of "drinking the Kool Aid," and people claim they're done reading until they come back at the end of the season to gloat about having been proved right by reality -- that doesn't happen, either because they weren't proved right or they don't remember. Either way, journalists and media companies have it worse.
But if you report on Plaxico Burress shooting himself while illegally carrying a gun into a nightclub, there are an infinite number of stories to be written that are 100% critical not only of Burress, but of players in general. There are, likewise, plenty of jokes to be made about how stupid it was, and how can you shoot yourself, and why were you wearing sweat pants? Haw haw haw.
Did anyone else notice that the sensationalistic coverage of Plaxico's incident died down immediately once the news broke that fellow Giants wide receiver Steve Smith had been robbed at gunpoint just days earlier, and that the players suddenly felt vulnerable and afraid (moreso than usual, that is)? Because I noticed. As soon as that story broke, people stopped reporting on the Plaxico incident; after a couple of days, it came back, but it wasn't about the incident itself, it was instead about the legal proceedings against Burress, and about the disruption he'd caused to his team, and essentially personal attacks about Burress. It was no longer about the simple issue of players in danger -- once there was another player in danger that didn't do something stupid, stories had to find some other way to cast the player in the worst possible light.
If you point out that Smith was robbed, and that Burress and other players were rightfully afraid that the same would happen to them, then you're not helping the situation! If you try to push for leniency for Burress in the courtroom, so that he can get back on the field as soon as his leg is ready, you're accused of pandering to the pampered, wealthy players who shouldn't be treated any differently from any regular person. (Of course, regular people don't have to worry about their children being held for ransom, and they don't have homes worth several million dollars -- wealthy people have larger needs for protection than regular people. And anyhow, why should Burress be punished more than the guy who robbed Smith? Oh yes. Because nobody's even trying to catch that guy, they've got the truly bad man in custody.)
The only thing to do, then, is to attack the players and to discredit them and to focus on the bad things they do. It makes the readers feel better about themselves, because they're good people who don't (get caught) carrying their guns around, and they don't (get caught) faking illness or family emergencies to get out of work. It makes readers trust the journalist because they're railing against the bad guys, rather than trying to explain the issues or promoting the good things while "glossing over" the bad.
Granderson is right that it's a problem, and he's right that it's annoying. I'd rather not be constantly bombarded by "news" about the less respectable players while the good guys get ignored. At the same time, the opposite might be even more annoying -- do you really want to hear nothing but stories about good deeds? Hearing about the home life of Kurt Warner and Peyton Manning gets pretty old pretty fast, no?
I think he's right that it calls for "a much larger philosophical discussion about the culture's unhealthy obsession with celebrity," but I think a bigger issue it points to is a systemic problem with the media and how it is forced by its audience to portray its subject in a negative light. If a media company switched to covering positive stories instead of negative stories, they would lose their audience to competitors who remain negative and sensationalistic.
And that's really too bad.
Posted by Sean Schulte at 2009-01-12 14:17:19
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