by Eric Deggans, for the Indiana University National Sports Journalism Center (
www.sportsjournalism.org)
Read the Deggans online column
HEREWriting for for the National Sports Journalism Center (at his alma mater, Indiana University), Eric Deggans, TV and media critic for the
St. Petersburg (FL) Times, talks about the blurring lines between true journalism and opinion (talk) radio and what's happening as the rigorous accuracy standards of journalism continue to diminish.
Want to chew over rumors of who will be the next quarterback to try saving the Tampa Bay Buccaneers? Or whether Mark McGwire deserves a job as batting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals? Then the hothouse of sports talk, with loads of bluster from former players, ex-coaches and longtime broadcasters, is the equivalent of sports nirvana.
But problems surface when folks who are used to kicking around harmless theories about their favorite teams suddenly decide to play journalist.
That’s what happened last week in Tampa, when radio personality Dan Sileo, a former football player-turned-broadcaster, reported on his show that the Buccaneers were in danger of being sold early next year because the family that owns the team lost more than $400-million in the scandal centered on fraudulent investor Bernie Madoff.
Sileo hung his revelation on an unnamed friend who worked at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and it struck sports media like a thunderbolt.
First, though there had been rumors that a cash crunch was behind some of the team’s riskier moves recently – and many wondered whether team owner Malcolm Glazer and his family had overextended themselves in purchasing the Manchester United soccer team back in 2005 – no one had confirmed it.
And a report that the Glazers had been involved with Madoff was also big news, because none of the client lists previously released to the public had featured their names.
Sileo’s revelations were eventually repeated across several news outlets; everywhere from the sports blog Deadspin to the Web site of Tampa’s CBS affiliate.
There was just one problem. The story wasn’t true.
At least, that’s what Sileo’s employer Clear Channel Radio announced not long after the Glazer family issued a scathing denial saying their companies had never invested a penny with Madoff and calling the story “baseless, irresponsible and slanderous.”
Clear Channel Radio eventually suspended Sileo and issued a retraction on the Web site for his home station, WDAE-AM, calling the story “factually incorrect.” Even Sileo’s boss Dan DiLoreto, the Tampa market manager for Clear Channel Radio, called the controversy “an example of a sports guy trying to be 60 Minutes."
“We don’t have the staff or the ability to support (investigative reporting) on that show,” DiLoreto said. “Their job is to reflect on what’s going on in the sports world and add perspective. It’s out of our purview to try and be investigative reporters.”
And it wasn’t the first time a WDAE personality had broadcast an explosive, ultimately incorrect report.
Back in March, the world’s attention focused on the Tampa Bay area when four men, two of whom were pro football players, were lost for days in the Gulf of Mexico. When one of the men, former college football player Nick Schuyler, was discovered by rescuers, WDAE personality Steve Duemig reported a second man was also rescued, citing an unnamed source close to the rescue effort.
But that source was wrong; all three of Schuyler’s friends died on the capsized boat.
Journalism experts say these are the problems that can emerge when people who aren’t used to meeting the more rigorous accuracy standards of journalism try breaking big news.
“One of the dangers in this scenario is you have individuals who are one moment doing talk radio or talk television – operating very much in the environment of assertion and opinion – and then you transpose these people into the world of reporting,” said Bob Steele, an ethics expert and a visiting professor of journalism at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind.
“People confuse pieces of information with substantive journalism…(where) verification is essential,” Steele added. “Even among experienced journalists, we too often overuse confidential or anonymous sources. We run the risk that sources we use who wish to be hidden behind a cloak of anonymity are not substantive in the information they give or the allegations they make.”
The impact of such problems are magnified by the current media structure, where show hosts can see attention-getting reports splashed across dozens of Web sites and TV outlets if the news is important enough.
Spearhead an impactful enough story and your reputation is made with blinding speed. But make a mistake, and the falsehood can travel halfway around the world before, as the saying goes, the truth even puts its shoes on.
Marty Pieratt, an adjunct broadcasting professor at the Indiana University School of Journalism, fondly recalled helping train former Cincinnati Bengals players such as Cris Collinsworth, Boomer Esaison and Solomon Wilcox in journalism techniques while working at the Ohio city’s NBC affiliate.
“You wonder, with everybody shouting and yelling (on cable newschannels and talk radio)…is that leaking into what should be journalism?” Pieratt said. “You hope management and ownership and really the audience is smart enough to know when somebody is truly a professional journalist.”
In Atlanta, CBS affiliate WGCL-TV just announced plans to drop its two on-air sports anchors, using instead personnel from a local sports radio station, WQXI-AM (790/ The Zone). An executive at WGCL said the move will save enough money to allow the addition of seven new people to the rest of the news operation.
But the change also seems a prime opportunity for further blurring between the opinionated nature of sports talk radio and the journalistic function of a TV newscast, as on-air talent working in an opinion-drenched environment are tasked to appear in a different setting.
Not so, insists WGCL’s news and digital content director, Steve Schwaid, saying a producer for the TV station will still be involved in developing content, reducing possibilities for problems with the entertainment/journalism divide.
“I haven’t turned the content over to (the radio station),” added Schwaid. “With the sports folks, we have to have our antenna up, asking ‘How do you know that? What are you reporting?’ But we have that concern about all reporting.”
Experts predict the problem will only grow, as the separation shrinks between those who opinionate on sports and those who report on it.
“This has long been a problem in sports coverage,” added DePauw University’s Steele. “People look at (sports reporting) as scores and personalities, but it has as much to do with the state of our times, financial issues, taxation, government relations, race, medical issues, and more. So any reporting on sports needs a level of expertise that’s comparable.”
Eric Deggans is TV and Media Critic for the St. Petersburg Times and a 1990 graduate of the Indiana University School of Journalism. His work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Village Voice, VIBE magazine, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications. He also writes a blog on media, The Feed, at blogs.tampabay.com/media.