More Discussion on Sports Journalism Ethics

NCAA Champion Magazine's Gary Brown wrote an interesting feature article titled, Truth Be Told?, which highlights the sports journalism ethics problem that I have been writing about extensively over the past several months. Here are some excerpts:

At no time in history have information, analysis and interpretation been so plentiful in sports journalism. In the last 30 years alone, USA Today has printed it, ESPN has televised it, the Web has synthesized it and talk radio has amplified it. While that feeds fans’ frenzy, the information arms race has turned sports reporters into personalities, columnists into entertainers and editors into marketing directors.
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Greg Bowers, an assistant professor at the Missouri School of Journalism and sports editor of the Columbia Missourian, said sportswriters realized with ESPN’s emergence in the 1980s and the rise of the Internet in the 1990s that merely reviewing what happened on the field of play wasn’t as important since most of the audience already knew the outcome. “The old reason for buying the paper is gone,” he said. “What journalists are trying to do is create a new reason for buying the paper.” That has meant giving readers something unique, and that change has resulted in a bent toward writers offering more inflammatory commentary and becoming more visibly a part of the story – perhaps even crossing a line from reporting to entertaining. “The traditional game story died years ago,” Bowers said. “Offering depth and analysis and telling the behind-the-scenes stories is where sports journalism has gone. Whether it’s the right direction has yet to be determined.”
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Does the media environment naturally provoke reaction or is provocation itself the real aim? For some, [Penn State journalism professor Malcolm] Moran said, it’s the latter. “As the environment has become shrill, the only way some people think they can be heard above the din is to be even more shrill,” he said. “Many executives measure a columnist by the number of responses he or she gets. Some columnists are outraged by that premise, but others market themselves as contrarians.”
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Whereas at one time sportswriter Dick Young was setting the agenda, now the brash, outrageous talk show host is. “And it’s risky,” Moran said, “because it’s not always journalism, but ratings-driven. The potential for manipulation and exploiting subject matter is a lot greater when you’re looking for ratings points.”

The rapidly changing delivery model of journalism in the 21st Century, the increasing competition among news sources, and the economic pressures and incentives (including the quest for ratings) is killing journalism ethics. As Brown mentions in his article, the essentials of journalism -- fairness, toughness and accuracy -- "are under duress in a time-to-fill environment." However, the First Amendment shield afforded the press in defamation, false light and privacy actions, and developed in an entirely different journalism environment over 40 years ago, provides today's profit-making press with little incentive to be concerned about journalism ethics principles. But arguably, the justification for the constitutional shield is getting weaker in this century as the press increasingly becomes less trustworthy.

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