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Jul
10
2009
What’s wrong with the media?
by Dave
The more Sports Center and ESPNews I watch, the closer I get to having an aneurism. Whatever happened to the good ol’ days when a breaking news story was actually news? The day is now filled with gimmicks and lopsided coverage for certain teams in certain sports. Let me cite a few examples so you know what I mean…
Hey, man, who need defense? We'll still make Sports Center, baby!
- First, MLB coverage. Have you ever noticed that ESPN will show large amounts of footage during highlights of only certain teams? The Mets, the Dodgers, the Red Sox, the Yankees, and the Cubs…their games are getting at least 60 seconds worth of highlights. If you didn’t know anything about baseball and turned on ESPN, you would with think the MLB consisted of 5-7 teams. Now, this has nothing to do with my love for the Phillies, but the Mets get coverage for nothing. SC devoted an entire NOT TOP 10 to them (which was hilarious), because they STINK. So when the Mets are good, they get mega-coverage, and when they are bad…the same. Teams like the Phillies (2009 World Champion) and the AL West leading Rangers get little to no love from SC. Instead those teams get highlights that consist of showing one big play and then the anchors talking about the rest the game during that clip. The Phightins had to beat the Reds 22-1 to get their own segment on SC.
- Second, their “reaches” for real stories. ESPNews has almost no news. It’s all garbage like “Chad Ocho Cinco plans to twitter this upcoming season.” Who cares? Until he starts producing on the field like he used to or the Bengals win more than 6 games, they – or him – are not news. The Brett Favre saga is another one. Now I love Brett, but as my good friend, and almost reader, Ron would say – last year Favre loved the attention during his annual retirement or non retirement saga, so ESPN gave it to him and it was completely unnecessary. This year he’s done nothing but avoid the media and they are still talking about him every day. Interviewing doctors and former teammates. They even asked Tony Romo about him! What? Why interview Romo about Favre? Are they living together? Is Romo his life-long friend? Because if that’s true, that’s a better story—how Favre and Romo kept that long-term relationship under wraps for so long. I am just waiting for the day the bottom line reads, BREAKING NEWS: A friend of Favre’s relatives tells ESPN, “I saw him on the 4th,” in a hick voice, “and he threw one of ‘dem ‘dere sodas to his nephew and afterwards he didn’t look real tired, so uh, I think he ain’t done playin’ yet.”
"Yeah. I woke up, had my coffee, and then, uh, came here. So...who's got questions?"
- Finally, where the media has failed me. With all the resources and all the mindless junk they classify as stories, they managed to miss a big one. LeBron “King” James recently ran a skills camp sponsored by NIKE called the “Nike-Run LeBron James Skills Acadamy” in Ohio. Apparently during a pickup game, Xavier sophomore Jordan Crawford poster-ized The King with a two handed jam while cameras were rolling. According to the story, James then approached the NIKE camp director, Lynn Merritt, and had a short conversation with her. Shortly thereafter, NIKE confiscated all the footage from everyone there so no one else could bear WITNESS to LeBron getting shat on. Now I’m not a LeBron hater, but that’s good stuff that I would like to see. But ESPN, or any other media program, failed to capture any video of LeBron getting dunked on by some kid, even if they had to sneak it out. Who still records with tapes anyway? I guess that isn’t interesting news footage, but thank God we all got to see Manny Ramirez’s pregame ritual for an Albuquerque Isotopes game, or Brett Favre’s plane landing in Wisconsin last off-season.
Good to see your site up and running…
I agree, the media sucks. I find it quite ironic that they will talk about how people are getting sick of Favre-a-palooza, yet they are the ones driving it down our throats.
Oh, and how about Fox cutting into the Phils game for Manny at-bats in his SECOND game back a few weeks ago. Give me a break and stop glorifying a d-bag and disgrace to the game. Apparently integrity is a thing of the past.
I could not agree with you more david but you left something out. Why does Manny get a pass from the media? Did he not fail a drug test for something related to doing steriods? Not to mention at a point in baseball where you’d have to be the dumbest person ever to try and get away with doing steriods. But Thats “Manny being Manny”… it makes me sick to my stomach. Another reason God did not make me a pro because if I was a pitcher I would consistently set tones by pegging every batter that I considered a scumbag. I rambled because the T.O. of baseball doesn’t get the hatred he deserves.