I had lunch with a journalist friend of mine this week in D.C. He's one of these grizzled veterans of the game who counts "speaking truth to power" as one of his hobbies and probably still uses a manual typewriter for a first draft before flipping on the computer.
During our conversation, he said to me what a lot of news reporters have said to me over the years, which is that sports has no business being on the front page of the Washington Post or any other newspaper.
I understand what he's saying, because he views sports not as cross-cultural community events that affect everything from friendships to the economy to office productivity on a Monday morning, but as slight entertainment that should be condemned to the ghetto of Section D in the fish-wrap. People like him look at an NFL regular season game being featured above the fold the day after a game, and wonder if the paper would do the same thing for an episode of "Lost" or the latest Will Smith movie.
The truth is that sports belong on the front news section of a newspaper when it's warranted. If the Yankees win the World Series, the New York Times is going to bump that story on Mideast Peace talks or tax reform down to the bottom of the front page. Not only because the win is history-making within its respective news realm, but because it's the biggest water-cooler topic in the paper's coverage area that morning. The papers will sell because that's the news — and, in this case or in some other limited cases, it is news — that people are talking about.
What I don't agree with is the notion that every NFL game the home team plays deserves that honor. That's what happens here in D.C. with the Washington Redskins: win, lose, or draw, you will likely see a photograph of Sunday's action as you walk by the Post's main section on a Monday morning. It's like regrettable clockwork. And the rest of the media falls in line with this over-coverage, whether it's putting the sports guy/babe on the nightly news near the top of the broadcast to chat about the game or dedicating hours of local radio to Redskins minutia. It's overkill, whether the audience demands it or not. There are simply too few hours and column inches available to dedicate so much of them to a regular season football game.
Which brings us to the tragic death of Sean Taylor.
A Redskins defensive back, Taylor, 24, was shot in the leg during what police have initially labeled a botched robbery in his Florida home, and later died during hospital treatment. The obvious and undeniable tragedy of this situation has been poignantly expressed by teammates, past and present, and relatives. Which brings us back to the media.
The mainstream D.C. media covered Taylor's shooting like a national tragedy, and then his death like that of a fallen dignitary. Taylor's life and sad demise were analyzed, eulogized, and speculated about (more on that in a moment) by every newspaper, radio station, and television network in the region.
And yet, for this non-Redskins fan and journalist living in the D.C. area, the coverage had a surprisingly muted impact. I believe this is for three reasons:
1. From a sports and cult of celebrity perspective, Sean Taylor wasn't yet a star whose death delivered a debilitating, "can life go on?" blow to the region's fans. He was a defensive back — perhaps the team's best since Darrell Green — but he wasn't a running back or a quarterback, the two positions that transform football players into mythic figures. He also never won a championship with the Redskins, which is ultimately what turns an average player into a Washington legend — there's an entire cottage industry around here built around the continued earning power of various parts of Redskins' past championship machines.
2. The D.C. media is, for lack of a more obvious pun, the boys and girls who cried "Redskin." Coverage of everything that is football in Washington has reached such absurd proportions that when a story of such tragic importance as Taylor's death arrives, the coverage doesn't feel extraordinary. In fact, it feels like it's striving to reach the level of Coach Joe Gibbs's return or Jack Kent Cooke selling the team. The only difference is that when the puffy nightly sportscaster comes on to pimp his Redskins coverage, the bouncy teaser music is replaced by somber "we're covering a tragedy" music. The Redskins overkill in this town has, in my mind, devalued the magnitude of reporting the Taylor story.
3. The bottom line is that the speculation game has overshadowed the calamity. The University of Miami "curse." Asking Taylor's lifelong friends if someone wanted to do him wrong. Junior G-men in the media trying to create links to other criminal activities that affected Taylor in the past. And, of course, attempting to add Taylor as the latest poster child for African-American males gunned down in the early years of adulthood because of a culture of senseless and unending violence.
To that end, I return to thinking about my old grizzled journalist friend. I'd like to ask him, in his opinion, "What is news?" Because the loss of human life through violence is, to me, pretty damn big news. Yet there are young African-American males gunned down every week in parts of Washington, D.C. where much of the Post's readership won't even drive through. And where do they end up in the newspaper? In a small paragraph somewhere in the Metro (or "B") section. They're buried by the media long before they're buried by their family — obviously, based on the past week, things change when you're wearing a burgundy and gold uniform every Sunday.
The media cowers in the face of death, whether it's nameless Iraqis slaughtered in a "war" or hundreds of young black men slaughtered in the streets of America's urban communities.
Imagine how public perceptions would change if their tragedies received an iota of the attention, spotlight, and adulation from the media as when a star's life is extinguished?
Greg Wyshynski is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].
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