I’m not saying the French Open should be prevented from running their competition the way they want, I’m saying they’re stupid and irresponsible, which is their prerogative.
Forcing a top flight competitor with documented mental health issues to endure the very thing that is causing her anxiety is penny wise and pound foolish. There is nothing about the sport of Tennis and the French Open that has been improved by this outcome. It’s all bad, either the French Open is bad, the WTA is bad, or a big Tennis star is bad. All because they wanted to enforce a “PR improving” work rule. Bravo!
Athletes earn huge sums of money from their employers, and their employers earn their money from fan interest and involvement. Media exposure helps generate that fan interest, so employers expect at least a minimal amount of that involvement. I believe they are entitled to mandate that.
Osaka wants the huge paydays, but she wants the privacy of an ordinary citizen. I think that’s hypocritical and unacceptable. So, let her withdraw. That is her privilege, but no whining, please.
Exactly. The current outcome is lose-lose for Osaka and the French open. Both sides exercised their prerogatives and both sides are suffering the consequences.
It is absolutely this. There is a stigma with mental health that isn’t there with physical health. If she had suffered a physical malady during the match that required immediate attention, no doubt she would have been allowed to seek help for it and blow off the press conference.
Besides, she did an on-court interview right after the match. Is it really necessary for her to do an on-court interview and a press conference? After a first-round match with an unsurprising result?
I think you’re conflating an athlete’s right to a private life, which they are absolutely entitled to, with some hypothetical “right” to be shielded from the media with respect to their professional activities, to which they are NOT entitled. Professional athletes are highly paid public figures engaged in the entertainment industry and have an obligation to their fans to communicate with them via the media. If they don’t want to do this, they can do what Osaka did – drop out and cease to be public figures.
That does not entitle the media to be abusive or to misquote them, and those media who do this can be dealt with in other ways, including lawsuits.
I agree athletes should turn up and say something at press conferences.
They shouldn’t have to answer questions (which are often just negative.)
As an example of this, the President of the French Tennis Federation gave a press conference after Osaka withdrew.
He read a prepared statement - and refused to answer questions!
Hypocrite.
If this was a sudden, one-time issue, then there should be some leeway. But if this is a chronic issue that she will want exemptions on a regular basis, then it’s not really fair to allow the exception. It doesn’t sound like she’s having a sudden panic attack. It sounds like giving interviews is something that makes her feel uncomfortable.
It would be the same with a physical injury. If someone has a bad ankle, the tournament doesn’t make an exception for their limited mobility. But if someone twisted an ankle in a game, the tournament will likely allow an unplanned break for a doctor to examine and provide some care. But there would just be a limited amount of time to fix it and the athlete would not have any special consideration once the game resumed.
“While there may have been a time when forcing the athletes to participate in these P.R. exercises made sense, times have dramatically changed with the rise of social media and the various other channels for getting the word out about a given sport. Teams and leagues can now promote their endeavors in a wide variety of ways, up to and including launching their own media companies…It seems more than a bit backward to think that one of the ways for promoting a sport includes forcing someone to speak to the media when that person doesn’t want to do it.”
So a hypothetical very best tennis player in the world, who has a crippling phobia of press conferences should not be accommodated, but instead should not be allowed to compete at all in professional tennis? And that’s what’s best for the sport? The “rules” should have no exceptions or leeway, and should always be fully enforced?
I think Osaka should have been accommodated. Especially if she was able to do the on-court interview, but was just asking not to do the press conference as well. Maybe the French Open has a legal right to require it, but it’s not the right move. (I actually wonder whether there isn’t a health and safety limitation or exception, but I’ll assume not for this discussion.)
The main reason athletes shouldn’t be required is because there is nothing to gain and much to lose for them. At best, they give a bland, meaningless interview that bores everyone. At worst, they say a wrong thing or slip of the tongue and get gaffe-media coverage for weeks.
If she’s good enough that they feel like making exceptions to their standard contract, then sure.
But after it’s been signed, they’ve made a deal.
Like I said, they aren’t paid because they are good at sportsball, they are paid only if people want to watch them play sportsball.
Maybe it would be better to have an amature league of the very best. Where they can just play and enjoy the game, without having to worry about fans or spectators or having tons of money.
Professional doesn’t actually mean better than amature, even though that’s the general connotation. Professional just means that they get paid.
She could certainly just go play tennis for free, or at least, for the cost of renting a court for a game or two.
Then she wouldn’t be required in the slightest to give interviews to the press.
A contract as written should generally be followed, or renegotiated, not simply unilaterally disregarded, as it seems you would like them to do.
No, they can’t require it. There is quite the prohibition on compelled speech. However, they don’t have to pay her if she does not deliver the services that she contracted to deliver.
It bores you. Frankly, it bores me too. However, you are not the one they are doing these interviews for. There actually are people who are very interested in what they have to say.
Have you ever actually watched one of these interviews? I don’t think that anyone who has summed up what happens in one of them, or given examples of what they think the questions and answers are, have.
The post game interview is just so stale. Most of the game or match commentary is just generalized platitudes, which is about the limit of most players’ knowledge of non-sports life anyway.
The only thing I really want to know from a player in a team sport is “what will you do when your contract is up?” Og knows what a swimmer or tennis player can say of interest.
Yeah, mine is a jaded viewpoint. But I’ve had a lifetime of being sold bullshit and I’d like to get a break from it.
That would be hypocritical if she ever said that, but she didn’t. A person wanting “the privacy of an ordinary citizen” wouldn’t openly talk about her mental health issues in a Twitter post for the world to read about.
Not to mention how she shares herself on her Instagram account. I don’t think you get what her gripe was. It’s basically dealing with the paparazzi that she couldn’t handle. It’s being up in public in front of the media; it gives her anxiety. It would be like someone terrified of heights being contractually obligated to speak from a balcony 200 feet in the air.
I also respect that she didn’t just bail out on her obligations and fail to show, she proactively let the tournament know so that they weren’t blindsided.
Professional sports only exist because there is a public interest in them. So I think it’s reasonable to expect the people who are making a living in public sports to do a share in the work of maintaining that public interest.
…I’m going to expand on this: but firstly I want to talk about Covid.
I’ve talked at length in the Quarantine forums about the different elements that made the New Zealand elimination strategy a success. And one of the key elements was what became known as the 1PM Press Briefing. Every day during the early days of the pandemic the Prime Minister and Ashley Bloomfield would front the cameras, talk directly and explicitly to the people of New Zealand, calmly explaining what had gone on the day before, what was likely to happen in the days to come, and what we needed to do to keep ourselves, our friends and family safe.
And after the briefing, there would be a press conference.
Now most of the time the questions were okay. But something started to become very obvious after the first few weeks. Firstly many of the reporters obviously weren’t listening to the briefing, and asked questions that had already been answered. Secondly, the priorities of (some) of the media became rather clear and obvious. The public that were tuning into the press conference were wanting to hear words of reassurance, to learn what we needed to do to keep ourselves safe. But the media wanted a story. They wanted to wrap a story around a narrative, a headline. They would ask leading questions, ask provocative questions, trying to needle the speakers into making a mistake, or saying something inflammatory.
We aren’t used to seeing press conferences live, and we certainly weren’t used to seeing press conferences daily for over a couple of months. But we were getting an insight into how “the sausage was made.” We could see the question, see the response, then we saw how (some) of the media would twist the narrative to tell the story it wanted to tell. It was genuinely unsettling. You have certain expectations of the media. They are the “fourth estate.” They are “holding those in power to account.” But it almost seemed as if (some) of the media were putting our pandemic response secondary to either scoring a cheap rhetorical point or to fit the narrative framing for the afternoon’s headline.
So how does that relate to this particular story?
Well here is a question that was put to 17 year-old Coco Gauff yesterday:
This is toxic. But it isn’t uncommon. And people of colour and women get it worse.
The media at these press conferences aren’t wanting to find out who won or lost the match. They are wanting a headline, a narrative. So is it any wonder that players would want to avoid these press conferences, especially if they suffering from depression and anxiety?
I follow Naomi Osaka on twitter. She lists her bio description as “chaotic neutral.” She posts funny videos where she falls over.
She fangirls over Nicki Minaj.
She promotes her products and partnerships. She shares jokes and inspiring stories. She is refreshingly honest and self-assured.
And the reality is that we don’t really need these press conferences any more to be able to get insight from the players. It used to be the only way we would hear from the players is through the lens of the reporter. But its a very different world now than it was even twenty years ago, and the younger players who have instagram accounts and twitter accounts and facebook pages and are interacting directly with their fans are asking themselves “why do we have to subject ourselves to this racist, misogynistic bullshit that is damaging to my mental health?”
In NZ when we started to see the sort of inane, unhelpful questions that were being thrown around at the press conferences the reporters were confronted about this on social media. And they pushed back hard. As a group. “You don’t understand” was one of the common refrains. But the thing is we did understand. We could see exactly what was going on. This isn’t to say that the press isn’t important, or a necessary instrument to hold those in power to account because they are. But they are not neutral actors.
And that is one of the reasons why the pushback has been so hard here. It isn’t just about skipping a few press conferences. Its an industry that is demanding relevance. We don’t need the press as a middleman to “tell us how this tennis player feels” any more, or to tell us about a “rivalry” that doesn’t really exist.
And its about institutions that don’t want to change. From the Guardian:
And this brilliant article from Jonathan Liew sums it all up.
I’m sympathetic. Despite what most people think, a great many high level athletes are Kawhi Leonard level introverted.
Sports and the press do have a relationship and athletes should be required to be polite to the press. I think in general viewers like seeing athletes and hearing the platitudes they mumble. I do. But it is probably exhausting to talk to the press and it might affect focus. Maybe athletes reluctant to do it should be allowed to do it when they are rested or have some say in the timing of things.
The fact it comes down to withdrawal saddens me. The league couldn’t agree to give her some degree of control? Maybe they did?
The problem with giving special consideration to some athletes is that it would give them an advantage over others. I’m sure many athletes find the interviews exhausting, distracting, boring, tiring, etc. I’m sure the questions from the press stick into the minds of the athletes and may affect how they play. I’m pretty sure that if was up to the athletes, the only voluntary interview would be from the champion of the event after it was all over. I doubt if any athlete wants to talk to the press during the competition. But that’s part of the competition. All athletes have to do it. It will take different tolls on different athletes, but that’s true about every aspect of the sport.
…all athletes shouldn’t have to do it. It’s part of why Osaka has taken a stand here. Change doesn’t happen in a vacuum. And Osaka’ voice has more leverage and reach than others on the circuit, so she is using that privilege here.
If I were the boss (owner, manager, whatever) of a sports team, I’d want my players to talk to the media as little as possible. At best, they say some boring inanities that make them slightly more of a “personality”, and thus slightly more marketable. At worst, they say something so boneheadedly stupid that it gets people boycotting the games. Why take the risk?