Johnny_Blaze_47
09-29-2006, 04:24 PM
These are some columns I've found from media columnists, et al., about the coverage of Terrell Owens.
---------------
The blame for this media circus lies with the media, not Owens
Jay Hart
Jay Hart
''There was no suicide attempt. The rumor
of me taking 35 pills is absurd.''
TERRELL OWENS
Wednesday morning at 9, Terrell Owens was a manic-depressive, deeply troubled human being who, in an attempt to end the suffering, had tried to kill himself. By mid-afternoon, he was catching footballs.
What a day!
Thanks to the 24-hour news cycle, the same one that's given us Scott Peterson, JonBenet Ramsey and Natalee Holloway, we now have T.O. — the suicide attempt that wasn't.
But what do we in the media care, now that we've swept the hours of speculation under the rug, wiped our hands clean and can start fresh again? Actually, we won't do that. Why would we, now that we have a juicy little story about a story that never happened?
As hard as you might find this to believe, we — and by we, I mean the media — hold the rest of the world to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. It's easy to do when there's no accountability.
We can judge whom we want, for what we want, without ever looking in the mirror. And if we're wrong, well, it's OK, because we were just trying to report something we thought was for the common good, which trumps all.
A month ago, there was a story about a former NBA player named Eddie Johnson who sexually assaulted an 8-year-old girl. In their haste to advance the story, the Chicago Tribune, a sister newspaper to The Morning Call, identified the Eddie Johnson in question as the former Illinois basketball player who now runs a basketball camp in Phoenix. In fact, the perpetrator was another former NBA player named Eddie Johnson, ''Fast'' Eddie Johnson, who lives in Florida.
A day later, the Tribune published a poignant apology, hoping that would make amends. But since when is an apology ever enough for a media that treats I'm sorrys like rubles?
We in the media don't take kindly to mistakes, when others make them. Just ask Chris Webber, who may have cost his Michigan team a national championship with his ill-fated timeout call in the 1993 NCAA finals. If the blown call that cost Chase Utley a home run Tuesday night ends up costing the Phillies a playoff berth, will first base umpire Rob Drake be given a free pass?
For at least six hours before T.O. finally set the record straight, we salivated over what we thought had happened. ESPN went with wall-to-wall television coverage and flooded its radio airwaves with non-stop T.O. talk. By mid-afternoon, the story had spread like wildfire, landing on CNN and at the top of the Drudge Report.
What could all those media outlets have done differently? Ideally, we would have waited, but because there's a 24-hour news cycle, we don't feel we can.
So all eyes were on the clock as it inched toward 3:30, when T.O., himself, would finally speak. In the meantime, we talked and talked and talked some more, turning the day into a media circus not seen since, well, T.O. did sit-ups in his driveway.
And then he spoke...
''There was no suicide attempt,'' Owens said. ''The rumor of me taking 35 pills is absurd.''
He said he had had an adverse reaction from taking a combination of dietary supplements and painkillers for his surgically repaired hand, which caused him to be ''non-responsive.'' That led his assistant to call 911.
''It's very unfortunate for it to go from an allergic reaction to a suicide,'' he said.
I believe him, because I can't imagine a guy who has taken 35 pills and tried to commit suicide would be out smiling and playing football the next afternoon.
Over the last several years, T.O. has brought a lot of attention on himself, but not this time. Here's a situation that he didn't create, that he didn't force, that he didn't want any part of.
The story now is the reporting. We built it up so much on Wednesday, we've made him front-page news on Thursday.
In the past, we've blasted Owens for going after Donovan McNabb on the sidelines, ridiculed him for walking into training camp with his headphones blaring, and berated him for doing sit-ups on his driveway, each time questioning his make-up, wondering why he always had to be the center of attention.
So the question now is this: At what point will we turn the same sword on ourselves that we're so quick to use on him?
[email protected]
http://www.mcall.com/sports/columnists/all-ag_quote-afbqa-asep28,0,2576979.column?coll=all-sports-col
---------------
Objectivity Lost in Owens' Story
By Larry Stewart
Times Staff Writer
September 29, 2006
In the newspaper business, the editors who make decisions on how a story will be covered have the luxury of time. They have time to analyze a situation, edit the ensuing story or stories and decide what kind of play those stories deserve.
The story of Terrell Owens' possible suicide attempt Tuesday night was first reported by Dallas television station WFAA the next morning about 6:30 PDT.
The Times had sent a reporter to Dallas, had another reporter in Los Angeles begin working the phones, and had J.A. Adande weigh in with his view. But by the end of the day, the story got a one-column headline, as did Adande's column.
ESPN, which enjoys the immediacy that television and radio provide but not the time to fully evaluate the importance of a news event, gave this one — in newspaper terms — a banner headline in capital letters.
By 8 a.m. PDT, when the next edition of "SportsCenter" went on the air, ESPN was in high gear, and by 10 a.m., ESPN preempted regularly scheduled programming for four hours of nonstop T.O.
Bob Ley, possibly ESPN's best journalist, and Trey Wingo anchored the coverage.
The problem was the network then had a lot of time to fill without much solid information. Also, ESPN is an all-sports network and is not as accustomed as CNN, MSNBC or Fox News to such full-bore coverage of what it regarded as a major news event.
As a result, Michael Irvin and other former football players-turned-broadcasters who work for ESPN suddenly were asked to be reporters.
Irvin's relationship with Owens and Owens' publicist, Kim Etheredge, did give him inside information. But it also led Irvin to sound more like an apologist for Owens than an objective reporter.
"I'm a football analyst, not a reporter," Irvin said Thursday in a phone interview. "But I became a reporter." Only one with no journalistic training.
He told viewers Wednesday that he had talked with Owens earlier Tuesday by phone and found him to be cheerful and fine. He also said on the air that he had talked to Etheredge on Tuesday night when she was at the hospital and that she told him the same thing she told a room full of reporters Wednesday morning — that Owens had had an allergic reaction to pain pills and supplements.
During Thursday's phone interview, Irvin said he had tried to avoid giving opinions because "this was far too serious a situation for us to get opinionated about."
But Irvin, whether aware of it or not, did step over the journalistic line by expressing sympathy for his friend in his on-air report.
Deion Sanders, however, ran well past that line in his own Wednesday on-air report for NFL Network, where he is employed as a football analyst. Sanders, who lives in Dallas, went to Owens' house — at Owens' request. Then, after visiting inside the house, viewers heard Sanders say, "Let's say a prayer for T.O."
Irvin said Thursday it was a mistake for Sanders to go to Owens' house. "I wouldn't have done it," he said. "My first obligation is to ESPN — that is my job. By Deion going over there, he became part of the story."
So did Irvin, although to a lesser degree, by not remaining objective from beginning to end. But it was hard for Irvin and many of his ESPN colleagues, especially those not trained as reporters, to avoid expressing personal opinions when there was so much air time to fill.
Such pressure can lead even trained broadcast reporters to slip up, saying things that are mere speculation rather than fact.
It's like when local television used to be so obsessed with police chases. Anchors would say the oddest things whenever there was nonstop coverage.
One example of that from the Owens coverage came when Keith Olbermann, on Dan Patrick's ESPN Radio show Wednesday, talked about his own thoughts of suicide — before he sought help from a psychiatrist.
Colin Cowherd devoted most of the time on his ESPN Radio morning show the last two days to Owens. Cowherd described the whole thing as a media circus, adding, "Sometimes you watch the circus and you laugh and cringe and wince."
The chief of ESPN's news division is Vince Doria, sports editor of the Boston Globe from 1975 to '89. He said Thursday that the network was justified in giving the story the attention it did because of Owens' notoriety.
But Doria sees the pitfalls.
"On a story like this, it's tough to advance the ball reporting-wise because of the lack of information coming in," he said. "You have to be careful. You can't speculate about mental health the way you can about a major trade. We may have stepped over the line a few times, but overall I thought we were pretty responsible."
Doria pointed out that the ratings for the Owens coverage were more than double what the normal ESPN programming would be for that time period. "I think that's an indication we served the viewers well," he said.
[email protected]
http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/cl-sp-tvcol29sep29,0,3897267.story?coll=cl-tvent
---------------
The blame for this media circus lies with the media, not Owens
Jay Hart
Jay Hart
''There was no suicide attempt. The rumor
of me taking 35 pills is absurd.''
TERRELL OWENS
Wednesday morning at 9, Terrell Owens was a manic-depressive, deeply troubled human being who, in an attempt to end the suffering, had tried to kill himself. By mid-afternoon, he was catching footballs.
What a day!
Thanks to the 24-hour news cycle, the same one that's given us Scott Peterson, JonBenet Ramsey and Natalee Holloway, we now have T.O. — the suicide attempt that wasn't.
But what do we in the media care, now that we've swept the hours of speculation under the rug, wiped our hands clean and can start fresh again? Actually, we won't do that. Why would we, now that we have a juicy little story about a story that never happened?
As hard as you might find this to believe, we — and by we, I mean the media — hold the rest of the world to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. It's easy to do when there's no accountability.
We can judge whom we want, for what we want, without ever looking in the mirror. And if we're wrong, well, it's OK, because we were just trying to report something we thought was for the common good, which trumps all.
A month ago, there was a story about a former NBA player named Eddie Johnson who sexually assaulted an 8-year-old girl. In their haste to advance the story, the Chicago Tribune, a sister newspaper to The Morning Call, identified the Eddie Johnson in question as the former Illinois basketball player who now runs a basketball camp in Phoenix. In fact, the perpetrator was another former NBA player named Eddie Johnson, ''Fast'' Eddie Johnson, who lives in Florida.
A day later, the Tribune published a poignant apology, hoping that would make amends. But since when is an apology ever enough for a media that treats I'm sorrys like rubles?
We in the media don't take kindly to mistakes, when others make them. Just ask Chris Webber, who may have cost his Michigan team a national championship with his ill-fated timeout call in the 1993 NCAA finals. If the blown call that cost Chase Utley a home run Tuesday night ends up costing the Phillies a playoff berth, will first base umpire Rob Drake be given a free pass?
For at least six hours before T.O. finally set the record straight, we salivated over what we thought had happened. ESPN went with wall-to-wall television coverage and flooded its radio airwaves with non-stop T.O. talk. By mid-afternoon, the story had spread like wildfire, landing on CNN and at the top of the Drudge Report.
What could all those media outlets have done differently? Ideally, we would have waited, but because there's a 24-hour news cycle, we don't feel we can.
So all eyes were on the clock as it inched toward 3:30, when T.O., himself, would finally speak. In the meantime, we talked and talked and talked some more, turning the day into a media circus not seen since, well, T.O. did sit-ups in his driveway.
And then he spoke...
''There was no suicide attempt,'' Owens said. ''The rumor of me taking 35 pills is absurd.''
He said he had had an adverse reaction from taking a combination of dietary supplements and painkillers for his surgically repaired hand, which caused him to be ''non-responsive.'' That led his assistant to call 911.
''It's very unfortunate for it to go from an allergic reaction to a suicide,'' he said.
I believe him, because I can't imagine a guy who has taken 35 pills and tried to commit suicide would be out smiling and playing football the next afternoon.
Over the last several years, T.O. has brought a lot of attention on himself, but not this time. Here's a situation that he didn't create, that he didn't force, that he didn't want any part of.
The story now is the reporting. We built it up so much on Wednesday, we've made him front-page news on Thursday.
In the past, we've blasted Owens for going after Donovan McNabb on the sidelines, ridiculed him for walking into training camp with his headphones blaring, and berated him for doing sit-ups on his driveway, each time questioning his make-up, wondering why he always had to be the center of attention.
So the question now is this: At what point will we turn the same sword on ourselves that we're so quick to use on him?
[email protected]
http://www.mcall.com/sports/columnists/all-ag_quote-afbqa-asep28,0,2576979.column?coll=all-sports-col
---------------
Objectivity Lost in Owens' Story
By Larry Stewart
Times Staff Writer
September 29, 2006
In the newspaper business, the editors who make decisions on how a story will be covered have the luxury of time. They have time to analyze a situation, edit the ensuing story or stories and decide what kind of play those stories deserve.
The story of Terrell Owens' possible suicide attempt Tuesday night was first reported by Dallas television station WFAA the next morning about 6:30 PDT.
The Times had sent a reporter to Dallas, had another reporter in Los Angeles begin working the phones, and had J.A. Adande weigh in with his view. But by the end of the day, the story got a one-column headline, as did Adande's column.
ESPN, which enjoys the immediacy that television and radio provide but not the time to fully evaluate the importance of a news event, gave this one — in newspaper terms — a banner headline in capital letters.
By 8 a.m. PDT, when the next edition of "SportsCenter" went on the air, ESPN was in high gear, and by 10 a.m., ESPN preempted regularly scheduled programming for four hours of nonstop T.O.
Bob Ley, possibly ESPN's best journalist, and Trey Wingo anchored the coverage.
The problem was the network then had a lot of time to fill without much solid information. Also, ESPN is an all-sports network and is not as accustomed as CNN, MSNBC or Fox News to such full-bore coverage of what it regarded as a major news event.
As a result, Michael Irvin and other former football players-turned-broadcasters who work for ESPN suddenly were asked to be reporters.
Irvin's relationship with Owens and Owens' publicist, Kim Etheredge, did give him inside information. But it also led Irvin to sound more like an apologist for Owens than an objective reporter.
"I'm a football analyst, not a reporter," Irvin said Thursday in a phone interview. "But I became a reporter." Only one with no journalistic training.
He told viewers Wednesday that he had talked with Owens earlier Tuesday by phone and found him to be cheerful and fine. He also said on the air that he had talked to Etheredge on Tuesday night when she was at the hospital and that she told him the same thing she told a room full of reporters Wednesday morning — that Owens had had an allergic reaction to pain pills and supplements.
During Thursday's phone interview, Irvin said he had tried to avoid giving opinions because "this was far too serious a situation for us to get opinionated about."
But Irvin, whether aware of it or not, did step over the journalistic line by expressing sympathy for his friend in his on-air report.
Deion Sanders, however, ran well past that line in his own Wednesday on-air report for NFL Network, where he is employed as a football analyst. Sanders, who lives in Dallas, went to Owens' house — at Owens' request. Then, after visiting inside the house, viewers heard Sanders say, "Let's say a prayer for T.O."
Irvin said Thursday it was a mistake for Sanders to go to Owens' house. "I wouldn't have done it," he said. "My first obligation is to ESPN — that is my job. By Deion going over there, he became part of the story."
So did Irvin, although to a lesser degree, by not remaining objective from beginning to end. But it was hard for Irvin and many of his ESPN colleagues, especially those not trained as reporters, to avoid expressing personal opinions when there was so much air time to fill.
Such pressure can lead even trained broadcast reporters to slip up, saying things that are mere speculation rather than fact.
It's like when local television used to be so obsessed with police chases. Anchors would say the oddest things whenever there was nonstop coverage.
One example of that from the Owens coverage came when Keith Olbermann, on Dan Patrick's ESPN Radio show Wednesday, talked about his own thoughts of suicide — before he sought help from a psychiatrist.
Colin Cowherd devoted most of the time on his ESPN Radio morning show the last two days to Owens. Cowherd described the whole thing as a media circus, adding, "Sometimes you watch the circus and you laugh and cringe and wince."
The chief of ESPN's news division is Vince Doria, sports editor of the Boston Globe from 1975 to '89. He said Thursday that the network was justified in giving the story the attention it did because of Owens' notoriety.
But Doria sees the pitfalls.
"On a story like this, it's tough to advance the ball reporting-wise because of the lack of information coming in," he said. "You have to be careful. You can't speculate about mental health the way you can about a major trade. We may have stepped over the line a few times, but overall I thought we were pretty responsible."
Doria pointed out that the ratings for the Owens coverage were more than double what the normal ESPN programming would be for that time period. "I think that's an indication we served the viewers well," he said.
[email protected]
http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/cl-sp-tvcol29sep29,0,3897267.story?coll=cl-tvent