ESPN and the coach's racist remarks: A question of journalistic ethics

Great Debates
1

So, i was watching ESPN last night and i saw this story:

Now, i don’t want to get into a debate over the coach’s comments. What interests me is that ESPN apparently felt obliged to report the contents of an interview to the interviewee’s employer.

Of course, if this were an official interview, the contents of the coach’s remarks might well have made it into the public record anyway. That is, if it was a proper, on-the-record interview, and Cochell knew that he was speaking on the record, then ESPN would have been well within their rights to report the comments on the air. But i’m a little perturbed that the network apparently saw it as some moral duty to rat the guy out directly to his employers.

I’m also a little confused as to whether the interview was even an official, on-the-record interview in the first place. If it was, i think the network could quite legitimately have reported the comments, as i said above. But if it wasn’t, then i’m also curious as to the ethics of a journalist using the remarks to hurt Cochell with his employer. If a reporter is working, and is involved in an off-the-record conversation, then that is exactly where the comments should stay.

I guess this also depends on whether ESPN reporters actually consider themselves journalists in the first place. This came to mind earlier this month when i saw an ESPN piece on chess legend and crackpot Bobby Fischer. The reporter, whose name i have now forgotten, was the son of a journalist who had befriended Fischer as a kid, and who had also conducted many interviews with the chess player during his career. Near the end of the story, the ESPN reporter was at a press conference given by Fischer in Iceland, and when Fischer made some disparaging comments about the guy’s father, and about Jews in general, the reporter started back at him, telling him that what he was saying wasn’t fair, and that his father had been a good friend to Fischer.

Now, as a matter of general principle, i agreed with everything the reporter said. But at the same time, it seemed to be rather unprofessional conduct for him to get involved in a personal debate over family history while he was also a professional journalist covering a press conference. In my opinion, if you think that the story you’re going to cover hits too close to home for you to be able to preserve your code of professional conduct, then maybe you should leave it some other reporter.

Anyhow, i’d be interested to hear what other people think about this. I’d be especially interested to hear any current or former journalists weigh in on the subject. I subscribe to the CJR, and i have a pretty good layman’s grasp of the concept of journalistic ethics, but these cases, and the case of networks like ESPN that are part journalism, part sensationalist crapola, seem to present a rather unique set of circumstances.

2

Funny, I saw that last nite too and it did cross my mind to wonder why ESPN went to the guy’s employers with this information.

Sounds to me like it wasn’t an ‘off-the-record’ conversation, more like they were doing a piece in general, hanging around on the field to get a sense of the personalities, maybe find a good story to tell (which, no doubt, they did). I wouldn’t doubt that quite a bit of journalism is worked like this, where you don’t have to explicitly say “we’re on the record here” and then “we’re off the record here”, especially for background pieces. It’s basically all on the record unless the subject wants it off the record (IANA Journalist though, so I’m sure someone will come correct this).

But, whether it was on the record or not, I don’t see where ESPN gets to go tattle on the coach. If they wanted to run the interview in the report, fine, go for it. But something about how they acted seems a little…I don’t know…overbearing. I don’t think it’s ESPN’s role to monitor, and more importantly make a judgement, on how a coach treats his team, unless it’s part of an actual news story they plan to publish. Which, it seems, they weren’t going to.

Note - the Bobby Fischer report was done by Jeremy Schaap, son of Dic Schaap. I didn’t see anything wrong with how he acted, in fact I thought it was quite professional.

3

Ex-journo (and current journalism professor) here: with any subject, but especially with a sophisticated person like a coach, who’s used to dealing with the media, as long as you’re identified as a reporter and you haven’t explicitly worked out 'off-the-record" status (which I would usually rather have terminated an interview than accept), whatever the subject says is good to go.

For instance, you run into O.J. in a bar. He says “Hey, how’s that reporting gig working out? You still a journalist? Yeah? Hey, let me tell you something: I killed Nichole.” You going to suppress the story because you met him socially, and he was speaking to you in a non-interview situation? Don’t be silly.

4

Former journalist for a minor metropolitan newspaper.

I’d have written a story using that.

5

Sure. As i said, if the comments weren’t off the record, then the guy is fair game. But would you have run to the his employer before reporting it? That’s the part i was rather perplexed about.

Not only that, but the reporter (or ESPN at least) then essentially became the news story. The story i linked, which reports the University of Oklahoma’s resopnse to the coach’s comments, actually cites ESPN as the people who directly brought the comment to the university’s attention.

Of course, they still would have been the whistle-blowers if they had printed the story. It just seemed to me that their main obligation as journalists was to print the story first, and then report on the outcome later, rather than playing tattle-tale directly to the guy’s bosses. The end result would have been about the same, and ESPN wouldn’t have risked appearing to play the moralizer.

I did too.

Until it got to the part at the end where he essentially started arguing with Fischer over whether Fischer’s comments were fair or not. It just seemed to me that, in that moment, Schaap (thanks for reminding me of the name) turned from a reporter into some guy defending his father.

6

No, not suppress it. I agree with you that someone, especially a coach in a situation like this, should know that a conversation with a reporter is fair game.

It was more the sequence of events that had me concerned. Also, if i’m interpreting the stories i’ve been reading correctly, this event took place on Tuesday, and ESPN didn’t report on it for the next three days. Then, when they did, it was not until after they had told the university.

Why not just run the story on Tuesday night, and let the chips fall where they may? Surely, given journalism’s reliance on exclusive stories and the desire to be first with the news, this would have been a logical course of action? If, as you suggest, and as i agree, the conversation should be considered “on-the-record,” surely there’s no ethical problem with ESPN simply reporting on the incident itself. Why wait for three days, and then only report the story after telling his bosses about it?

7

Yet another ex-journo here. Still in the business but on the owning and running side these days.

Let’s clear this up for our readers: Experienced interviewee or not, if you don’t make clear to a reporter that your discussion is ‘off the record’ then anything you say can be used in print or broadcast. You say it…you’re on the record no matter what. You have just placed your fate into a reporter’s hands.

If it’s a feature piece on ESPN (with backing tape and such) then 3 days really isn’t that long to bring it forward. I know nothing more about the story that what has been posted in this thread but it wouldn’t surprise me if ESPN contacted the school to get their reaction to their coaches comments so they could work it into the story. That’s what I would have done…live on tape if I could. The jaw drop would have made great theater.

8

Could it have been a matter of courtesy? An attempt to warn the school what was about to happen so they wouldn’t be caught completely cold when the story broke?

I’d also guess that ESPN might have been trying to give the U a chance for a response before they went public with the story.

I don’t think this is a question of ratting the guy out to his bosses but a case of telling the school, “Hey…this is what the coach said, we’re going to report it, do you have anything you want to say about it on the record?”

9

The University of Oklahoma is conducting an investigation after ESPN informed the school of racially insensitive comments made to the network by OU’s head baseball coach Larry Cochell.

You can read that as “ESPN ran to the coach’s boss and ratted him out” or you can read it as “ESPN got a juicy comment from the coach and immediately ran to his boss to get a comment on his comment.”

That happens all the time.

10

Actually, the story i saw was more in the order of a 90-120 second newspiece.

Since when do journalists have an obligation to be courteous just because their story might cause an institution some embarrassment?

I agree that this is probably correct. Even if it is, though, i don’t quite understand the wording of the story. Why focus so much on ESPN’s role in bringing the story to the university, rather than just reporting the guy’s remarks and then saying somethging like “University officials, asked to comment on the coaches remarks, said…”?

11

Since they care about access.

Sports journalists are highly dependant on being on working terms with coaches, players and the like. The coach will be fired, perhaps, but there’s no reason to get the OU AD pissed at you by not giving him a heads up.

12

Which is exactly what is wrong with so much journalism today—the fact that they care more about “access” and about rubbing shoulders with famous people (whether it’s sports stars, politicians, entertainers) than about the profession of journalism.

There was a great article in Harper’s a few years ago by a guy who spent a bunch of time following the Chicago Cubs around. He noted that most of the reporters were more interested in being buddies with the players, and in basking in the players’ reflected glory, than in writing about the actual baseball. This led, he believed, to reporters who were unwilling to write bad things about the quality of a player’s performance (even when the players were doing awfully) for fear of being shunned in the clubhouse. That’s no service to the media outlet or, more importantly, to the fans.

Let’s face it, a decent sports reporter should be able to write about the actual sport without ever setting foot in the clubhouse. When was the last time you heard anything new, interesting and relevant come out of a player’s mouth in a pre-game or post-game interview? Half the time, sports reports consist of nothing but breathless reporters acting all wide-eyed and golly-gee about some primadonna’s made-for-TV canned comments.

Here in Baltimore, there was a guy who wrote for the local free newspaper for the first couple of years i was in the city. He never had interviews with the players; hell sometimes, he watched the games on TV. But he knew his sports, and his analysis of the games was better than half the hair-gelled frat boys that pass for sports reporters on local television. Hell, i get more actual sports analysis from people here on the SDMB than i get from most media outlets. I’d prefer to listen to someone like RickJay about baseball, or Ellis Dee about football, than some of the overpaid airheads on television.

13

Access is not about “rubbing shoulders with famous people,” when used correctly. I’m sure some “journalists” use it that way, but to reputable journalists, access is about having a way to A) get news and B) get reactions to news. It has nothing to do with famous people. Don’t confuse caring about access with not caring about journalism.

My job IS collecting news for a newspaper. Specifically, high school and college sports. Now, we cover right around 20 different schools in two states. We cover all the sports those schools play (which right now, consist of baseball, softball, soccer, boys and girls tennis, golf and boys and girls track). All those schools don’t have all those sports, but most of them have most of them. Let’s say five of the eight. That’s 20 different schools with about five sports each, so that’s 100 coaches. I’ll even grant that some of those sports are coached by the same coaches (boys and girls track, in many cases). Even granting that, that’s still more than 50 coaches we need to deal with on at least a weekly basis. It pays to stay on good terms with them, if at all possible.
We’ve got approximately three full-time reporters on sports staff. How do we get most of our news? The coaches call it in. We’ve sufficiently not pissed them off during their tenure so they feel it’s worthwhile to let us know what’s going on. This applies to huge stories (like the biggest high school around here hiring a new football coach, and we’re the first to know who) to minor, everyday stuff (game results, stats).

In short, access is very important to us. I can name ten coaches who we have very good relations with, who we can count on to call in their games, to let us know if anything big comes up in thier school, to comment on another story we’re working on. Those are the relationships we try to cultivate with ALL the coaches, with all the athletics directors, with all the schools. To cultivate those relationships takes mutual respect, mutual trust. It’s not about “rubbing shoulders with famous people” because none of them are famous. It’s about not destroying that trust and respect we’ve built (or are trying to build) with that coach or that school.

14

Well, in this case i was talking more about journalism that does focus on professional sports with famous people. Look, i realise that i might have overstated the case somewhat, that there are plenty of good professional journalists out there who do their best to compile and write good stories, and that access doesn’t always mean toadying to the egos of your subject. But, in my opinion, sports reporting, especially as it appears on TV, is generally more about chatting with the players and getting useless sound bites than it is about a proper analysis of the games and the play of the teams and the players.

For example, last year Ray Lewis had a few pretty mediocre games for the Baltimore Ravens. I don’t recall once hearing the sports reporters on the news say anything like, “Ray Lewis was effectively shut out of the game today, and he also uncharacteristically missed a few tackles. Lewis’s form so far this year has not been up to the standard of his recent Pro-Bowl seasons, and for the Ravens’ defense to get back on track Lewis will have to return to top form.” Or whatever.

Instead, they give a quick blow-by-blow account of the game, and then stick their microphones in the players’ faces so they can get some pointless sound bite about how we need to give 110% next week, and how you have to give full credit to the opposition because they played a good game, blah blah blah blah.

Even the Columbia Journalism Review noted, in a long article a few issues back, how the problem of access can lead to a watering down of political news. They pointed out that excessively tough questioning can lead to your list of political guests drying up and moving to the shows where they are allowed free rein to pump out propaganda instead of answering pointed questions. This is a disservice to the public, in my opinion, and is an indictment not only of journalism, but of the politicians and other public figures who feel no apparent need to have their decisions and pronouncement scrutinised or questioned.

Just out of interest, Garfield, let me ask you a question: You’ve made clear that your job is made much easier by your good working relationship with the local coaches and schools. How would these relationships affect the way you reported a story about, say, drug taking in the football program at one of those schools? Or, say you found out about some sophomore girl giving blow jobs to half of the baseball team in the locker room? Or say the one of those coaches who is so helpful to you said of one of his black athletes, “There’s no nigger in him”? What obligations would you feel to those schools an coaches, and how would it affect the way you reported the story?

15

Ok, now I understand what you’re getting at, and I mostly agree. Much sports reporting (especially at the pro level, but sometimes at the college level) does seem to focus on the player as a person and not as part of a team (or in individual sports, as a personality, not an athlete). This, beyond the occasional human interest feature, is out of line.

I do tend to notice when ESPN (or whoever) does actual analysis of games rather than focusing on personalities. I shouldn’t notice it, it should be normal, but I do.

To preface this, I’m not the sports editor, I wouldn’t (and wouldn’t want to, yet) be making these decisions in the course of my job, and so on.

To answer though, I would say that it wouldn’t change how we would cover and report the story. Normally, with something detrimental to a specific person, team, or school, we would try to get the school/person/coach/athlete’s point of view and incorporate that into the story. That wouldn’t change. In the normal course of doing that, we would probably inform the AD or principal (of any school, not just the ones we’re buddy-buddy with) of what we knew, what our source was (unless it was specifically confidential) and how we’re planning to write about it (not specifically, I just mean a big front page story might be reacted to a little differently than a small mention inside the section).

The school/AD/coach wouldn’t persuade us not to run the story, nor would threats of non-cooperation from then on work. That’s not what I mean by “access is important.” Not important enough to cover up news. The reasoning for telling them (that I would use) is that A) it’s just plain good journalism to try to see all sides of a story, B) they may provide insights that we don’t have (the source was recently fired/expelled/kicked off the team), and C) There’s no reason not to. They can hear about it from us the night or two before it runs, or they can read about it in the paper. What’s the difference to us? Nothing. What’s the difference to them? They don’t get a bombshell dropped on them and the entire district at the same time. They have (a little) time to prepare.

16

Which (journo-prof hat on) is why reporters are shifted off beats. Or should be.

It often seems perverse that, just when reporters are beginning to get comfortable with their beats (the coaches all know their names, the reporters know what’s good to eat in each “away” game town, the motels all treat them as regular clients, etc.) the sports reporter finds out he now is going to cover city hall, the city hall reporter is covering the arts, etc. but it makes sense, though not on an immediate individual basis.

That comfort level means that some basic reporting isn’t going to get done, that reporters will be less aggressively adversarial in covering their subjects, precisely because they will feel some sympathy towards them, or some gratitude for kindnesses rendered, or some trust in people who’ve been straight with them so far, or some such, and the editor has no choice but to yank them off that comfortable beat and put them somewhere they feel less at home.

Not actually done often enough, IMO.

17

Coach Cochell resigned today. FYI

His official statement was that he didn’t want to tarnish OU and that he really didn’t feel that way.

My personal opinion is that he was hip deep in the Good Ol’ Boy culture and his true feelings came out, thinking he was with another Good Ol’ Boy. He was at Oral Roberts University way back when, which may or may not shed some light on his possible real life (as opposed to TV/newspaper/magazine interview) ideals and opinions.

FTR, I believe the GOB culture exists all through this great land of ours, so no picking on OK, okay?

As for the journalist’s actions, I’m glad Cochell got outed as to his real opinions. Whether it was right or merely a misguided coutesy to wait is pretty much a moot point to me. He reported. (BTW, IANAJ, just a sports fan.)

18

I think NoClueBoy is right. But I should say that given the context of the remark it doesn’t really show Cochell to necessarily be a heinous racist. He may be somewhat ignorant and prejudiced but there wasn’t any hatred animosity or even a derogatory nature to what he was saying about his player.

From what Cochell said it seems as though in his mind he sees “classes” of blacks. He thinks some are “niggers” while others aren’t. And the use of the derogatory term is only appropriate when used towards blacks that have bad personal characteristics.

It still isn’t th ebest use of language, or appropriate, but it’s a bit different from a “real” racist that believes the term nigger is just the appropriate term for black people, because all blacks are inferior.

19

How exactly is this not racist? BTW, What is a “real” racist? Just because he isn’t in the KKK doesn’t mean he’s not a racist.

20

When talking about groups of people we dislike we tend to oversimplify things.

You talk about Nazis for example you get oversimplifications. There’s lots of Nazis that really weren’t bad people, and they were in a situation where they didn’t have many choices or didn’t perceive many choices other than joining the party.

I tend to use racist when talking about someone that shows prejudice from a position of power, or obviously finds his race to be superior to others.

We haven’t really seen that here. Bill Cosby for example decries what he sees as a large segment of young black America that has become basically worthless because of bad parenting and a lack of personal drive. Cosby has made a stand against a segment of a population, that doesn’t mean he’s “racist” or “self-hating.” He’s just correctly or incorrectly found a segment of a population that he has problems with.

From what I read I just think Cochell has a problem with a certain segment of blacks. Blacks that are lazy or bad students, and in his mind these types of blacks are “niggers.” The particular word is a “racist” word (as racist as a word can be, anyways) and shows a lack of tact and empathy for the problems of racial minorities. But he’s also showing that he doesn’t have prejudiced feelings about blacks as a population, and if you don’t have prejudiced feelings about blacks in general then you aren’t racist.

For example if I hate white truck drivers because I think they’re all fat stupid losers, that doesn’t make me a racist just because the truck drivers are white.
Or for another example, if you hate pit bulls that doesn’t mean you are a specist or “anti dog.” It just means you hate a particular type of dog (and in all of the cases I’ve listed, and including Cochell’s case, we can’t really say that hating one particular group is acceptable, it just isn’t the same as racism which is the irrational hatred or dislike of an entire population.)

It’s still a form of prejudice that’s not really socially acceptable but it isn’t racism.