…a simple “yes” this is still my position or “no this isn’t, let me clarify” would have sufficed.
But okay then.
What’s so great about the system? Why does it need to be preserved? Someone above put forth that the athletes needed to answer the tough questions - but do they really? The questions may be tough, the answers are not profound.
Or, let’s do a thought experiment - let’s say that next season for a particular sport, a great many of the players opted out of all press appearances and paid the appropriate fines. They still showed up for practices. They still showed up for games. They still played their hearts out. Just none of the currently mandated press conferences. Either no one would care. Or the players (because they had fewer fans) would lose money because of lowered interest in the sport. Eventually, they’d decide “would I rather make less money or show up for an X minute press conference?” If people really want a certain player, they could be offered even more money. Various players would different decisions, but eventually a new equilibrium would be found. The market does its job.
The resistance to a player making her/his own decisions rubs me the wrong way. It comes across as very controlling in a suspect manner.
This is pretty unrealistic really.
RealityTV-ified sports have invariably captured the top end of their sport due to their financial might. If someone is exceptional at a sport that has been turned into a RealityTV show, their only options are to continue to compete at a level below them, or enter tournaments where they will be required to join the show.
And in the show, there is no “get paid less but participate only in the sport aspect” option.
Nobody has established that skipping a press conference = disdain for the audience. At best it is less than ideal, and theoretically a problem if it is a widespread practice. Current rules that impose fines for skipping PCs work tremendously well, skipping a PC is a notable event, not even approaching standard practice in any sport that I can think of.
This issue is in the news not because fines were imposed, but because an athlete’s career was threatened, and that athlete chose to stop playing the game rather than risk damaging their career. This has never happened before.
Most of the posters here are not arguing that PCs should be a free for all, do it if you feel like it affair, but that threatening to scuttle a player’s career over it is just going too far. They aren’t that important. There are, in fact, limits to how hard you should push for compliance in the workplace.
…there is a generation of young tennis players who grew up watching the way the institutions treated Venus and Serena Williams and those institutions were never afraid to try and “put those two in their place”. This is much more than a simple contract dispute. It’s the intersection of a number of different things that are long overdue to be addressed.
The reality of this particular situation in my view is the following: Naomi Osaka erred in how she handled her desire to not conduct press conferences, by not approaching the tournament organizers but simply stating, right before the tournament started, that she would not be doing them. The tournament responded to her in an out of proportion way by threatening her career. Both parties did not handle the situation well. Osaka by not trying to work with the tournament and airing her side publicly and the tournament by not taking into consideration the very real mental issues she is dealing with.
Is one side to blame more than the other? I don’t know, as many have stated, part of being a professional player is doing press, and as is true with any other work, you often have duties that you find onerous but you do them anyway. Opting out of those duties is usually something you negotiate, not something you just state flatly you won’t do. On the other side a good employer will take into consideration the reason for you not doing one of your duties and work with you.
And really this what it comes down to with regards to athletes speaking to the press. It is just another job duty, even if it is not the main one. Teachers do more than just give grades, they meet with parents, attend PTA meetings, etc. I do not think it should be treated any differently in that respect. The two parties, the athlete and team or league or whatever, should negotiate when they have a difference as to how to do a particular duty. I think the problem here is that mental health is not one of the reasons seen as a particularly valid one for opting out of doing so because athletes are supposedly all physical.
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Sure. I imagine it’s quite different when you have a public figure versus most of us ordinary people who don’t have the press asking questions about us. I think you’d start by asking the athlete what, if anything, they’d like the organization to say about their unavailability for interviews when asked. Failing that, a generic answer like “she’s unavailable” should suffice.
But the only “problem” is that it will be minorly harder for the French Open to make ungodly amounts of money, and I don’t see how that’s a problem for anyone who’s not a part of the French Open organization.
I was reading today’s N.Y. Times obituary for former relief pitcher Mike Marshall. It made a point of mentioning that Marshall was known for not being obliging to the sports media, giving “perfunctory” answers to the reporters’ questions.
Imagine, they’re still holding a grudge after 40-odd years. I doubt that fans of the Dodgers and other teams he played for ever gave a shit about anything besides him saving and winning games.
Maybe sports associations and leagues mandate that athletes interact with sports media not just because they think it will garner good publicity, but also because they fear the wrath of reporters and their employers in the event that athletes don’t comply with their demands.
I can’t agree with this. Maintaining a relationship with parents is key to a teacher’s success. It’s not a complete tangent unrelated to their job. That is a bad comparison. A better comparison would be if a teacher refused to participate in a bake sale to raise money for the school, or chaperone a dance. A teacher can’t be a good teacher if that teacher doesn’t work with parents. An athlete can absolutely be a good athlete without attending every press conference, or any of them.
How key the Parent-Teacher relationship is subject to debate, but that isn’t my point anyway. A teacher has many duties that go with that job that aren’t strictly teaching but are still expected of them anyway. They may be required to administer certain tests outside of their subject matter that will allow the school system to have access to additional money. This is akin to that press conference, which is required, adds to the income received by the overall organization, but does not have a direct relationship to their primary responsibility.
//i\\Would you find it justified to fire a teacher for not participating in those tests? I doubt any teachers’ union would.
Yeah, they devoted three paragraphs to it, even. Leave the man alone, for godsakes.
Actually, the kinesiology answer was pretty funny.
Which is why I wrote above that the response from the tournament was excessive. I wrote that both parties handled it poorly. And yes, a teacher might get fired, especially if the school, or district or whatever, had little to no notice that the teacher decided not to administer a test. I am not advocating for it being an appropriate response, but failing to meet the expectations of your employer, even if you feel they are not part of your core worth often results in penalties, which in this case Osaka was willing to accept. Then of course they upped the ante which made all parties involved lose.
At this point in time, press appearances are part of what professional player does, and if they want to opt out of it, they should negotiate with appropriate authorities to do so. The unfortunate problem tennis has is that they are individual contractors negotiating with an organization and therefore there is a definite power differential involved.
//i\\…this…doesn’t sound good.
You do realize that this doesn’t sound good right? It sounds like the school is exploiting a loophole that puts teachers into positions they shouldn’t be doing to access funds that the school otherwise shouldn’t be able to access. That’s a bad thing, isn’t it?
And it isn’t remotely comparable to a press conference. The press aren’t paying a fee to get access to the players. The exact direct benefit to the tournament isn’t easily (if at all) quantifiable in the way we can do with your example.
…what you are seeing is a “negotiation.”
Many states and districts have standardized tests that they give to students that depending on the results will result in more or less funding for the schools. These are not necessarily tests that count toward a grade but are supposed to measure school performance (whether accurately or not is a whole other discussion), so not administering the test can mean loss of funding for schools. In the same way, not having someone show up for a press conference can mean loss of advertisement for tournaments since whatever subset of fans that would continue watching will not.
Although things have changed due to streaming, it is true that during a broadcast, the time between the end of the match and the post match conference can be filled with ads, but if there is no post match conference, then that ad revenue is lost. How much of a loss it is, of course is debatable as some people see no value in them at all and would not watch anyway. Also, and this is true during a tennis tournament, the time in between can be used to cut to other matches which might get people interested in players other than the one they just saw play.
There is definite value lost without the post match conference, as there is when a major player exists the tournaments either by losing or withdrawal.
I would call it more brinkmanship than negotiation, one side said, I won’t do something so deal with it, then other side said, oh yeah well if that is true then we are going to punish you more. I hardly call that a negotiation. Also, Osaka is not the first tennis player to discuss mental health issues publicly. Mardy Fish also did the same.
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…you do realize that this is fucked up right? And that this in no-way analogous to a press conference?
I don’t think we actually need an analogy for a press conference. Because this:
Seems to indicate you don’t understand the actual purpose of these press conferences.
Press conferences aren’t often broadcast live, in fact I can’t remember (in the coverage I see here in NZ) them ever being broadcast live at all. The occasional clip gets used in the highlights package or in the news, the odd quote ends up in the next day’s paper. Most press conferences are used to develop the narrative the media want to tell. See my first post here about what happened when NZ government press-conferences started being broadcast live and unfiltered. They don’t want the public to hear the questions being asked. They are looking for a sound bite so they can develop a story. This isn’t always a bad thing. Most of the time it is boring and mundane. Sometimes (as I cited up thread) it descends into outright racism and misogyny.
Sure: we might not see Osaka holding a bottle of sponsored water in front of a backdrop of logos. But she is drinking that sponsored bottle of water on court, surrounded by those very same logos as well, so the impact of losing that would only be marginal, and not easily measured.
Unless something extraordinary happened on court they aren’t going to be running ads between the end of a first-round game and the press conference. They will just switch coverage to another court and continue to run adverts as per schedule.
There is a difference between “advertising” and “promotion” that I’m not sure if you are understanding. The concern here isn’t that advertising will be affected: but “promotional activities.” They really are two different things.
Which is why I wrote “negotiation.”
You said it yourself: “there is a definite power differential involved.” But I think you are underestimating the extent of that power differential. This is the same tournament that decided to ban the (perfectly-in-the-rules) black catsuit that Serena Williams wore that was helping her circulation after she nearly died during pregnancy. There was no negotiation there. Why not play by the tournaments rules?
I’m not entirely sure what lesson you’ve taken from the fact that Fish had to deal with mental health. It meant he had to step away from his career. That isn’t what we want to happen here. Osaka already is one of the greatest women tennis players ever. A role model the world over and an ambassador for the game. And she is only 23. The game can’t afford to let the same thing that happened to Fish happen to her. She isn’t the highest paid women athlete ever for no reason. She brings eyeballs, she brings fans, she brings money to the game. And if they let her go because they don’t want to make relatively simple accommodation to her (and eventually other players) health and well-being, then they are being utterly foolish.
My experience with pressers is different. I have seen them live, and could hear the questions being asked and answered, which can also be read in the transcripts (though those are disappearing), so I don’t agree with the characterization that they are just used for a few sound bytes, or to try to tell a story.
What I am taking from it is that I see Osaka being championed for something that another player went through and spoke about. I was sad when Mardy retired and I thought it was unfortunate that he felt he had to. Then would have been a good time for the ATP, WTA and ITF to do something about it.
I agree that accommodations should be made, and it looks like she was doing so herself by participating in the on court interview after the match, at the same time I see no indication that she reached out to the tournament before she made her decision to skip the press conferences altogether. For that I blame her team for not advising her better. I do understand the power differential between the player and the tournament, but star players can get preferential treatment if they request it. The tournament is not blind to the fact that they bring in the money.
I think it is unfortunate that mental illness is not treated like physical one that leaves you unable to meet an obligation. If she had to get treatment right after a match for an ankle turn or something of the kind, then missing the presser could have been accepted. Athletes are somehow seen as simply bodies and only an injury is seen as the reason to skip an obligation.
//i\\
…very very few people see press conferences live. And even fewer people track down transcripts to read them, and who would be transcribing the average press conference anyway?
What happened in NZ was that millions of people tuned in to watch the daily covid press conferences for about a couple of months. We could watch the thirty minutes of questions then we would see the reporters turn that 30 minutes of questions into a 10-second sound-bite wrapped around a brand new narrative. So you are welcome to reject the premise that this is what happens, but this is exactly what happens most of the time when press conferences happen. Its the reality of the media. It’s what they do. This isn’t (necessarily) a bad thing. Sometimes complex issues need additional context. But most of the time the public don’t watch or hear what happens at a press conference. They see how it is filtered through the lens of the reporting.
Wow.
I’m not exactly sure why people in this thread want to take away Osaka’s agency in so many different ways. Mardy most certainly wasn’t the first and only player to have to deal with mental illness. And the fact that Osaka is being “championed” now takes nothing away from Mardy at all. Fish offers his unconditional support for Osaka here. That really is the only important takeaway here.
Can they? I think the evidence shows that the tennis establishment are equal-opportunity arseholes. What gives you the impression they would give their stars (especially women of colour) preferential treatment? They often display nothing but contempt.
Do you really think so?
Plenty of people in this very thread seem to think that Osaka is just another player and easily replaceable. And the establishment shows no interest in making future accommodations for player mental health. They don’t think they need her. Which is why they chose to escalate. They think the player will back down because that is just what the players will always do, and if she doesn’t, then they think it will make a marginal difference to their bottom line. And in the short term they might be correct.
But it’s the longer term impact they should really be thinking about. Because Osaka isn’t the only player that has to deal with depression and anxiety. She is just one with enough leverage to be able to speak out publicly on the issue. The establishment are showing their cards here to all the other players. That this is how little they care about them. And that isn’t good for the future of the game.