The Blazersedge Guide to Understanding the Media

I most generally just think of media people as news that I strive for. I can see the bias as well as the unbiased. Many report what they see, not what they feel while others try to bend the truth to what they believe or want to believe.

Listening to Dave, Casey, and Dawson (sp) on their podcast (by the way when is the next one), I can hear three different opinions on one subject or one person; all three don’t vary from the truth to far, but gives their opinion on the bases of how they feel. I don’t always agree with any of them, but being that starving lion, I will eat all of it just for some food.

I don’t dislike media people; I don’t know any of them personally. I do disagree from time to time, but I know only what I hear from the announcers or what I read. Therefore, I don’t consider myself as a good source of the truth.

I do have the tendency to dislike certain writing styles. I dislike the media people on talk shows that only let the fans that are affirmative of what they say give an opinion. But even then, it is great to hear or read when you are the starving lion.

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Dave, you appear to be in contradiction between calling for moderation when media members are “just doing their jobs” and earlier noting that media members tend to feel toward people in a team’s organization based on “how easy or difficult those individuals make the media member’s job.” You could be taken as someone defending the jobs of pundits and reporters and everyone else, fans and Blazers staff included, should adjust their behavior accordingly. That is, if media people can love or hate organizational people based on how easy the latter make their job, why can’t fans love or hate pundits based on how easy they make it to love their team? I hope I haven’t taken you out of context, but I am moved to wonder what level of responsibility people in the media have for their choice of profession.

I’m coming from this point of view. People like Canzano and Jason Quick chose their jobs, and seem to delight in making their share of controversial pronouncements, which themselves seem (call me crazy) custom-made to elicit the fan reaction you decry. Canzano, for instance, would still be writing about college football in a newspaper if he didn’t have the ambition for celebrity, so he worked his way to being a columnist, then a local radio pundit. I see lots of purposefulness here. I think everyone here would laugh out loud if they heard a national politician or movie star decry the paparazzi and tabloids which intrude into their private lives. They wanted the life of fame.

That being said, I think I agree with the spirit in which you write. I myself can’t stand to listen to call-in radio shows (either sports or politics related) because I can’t recall hearing a listener say anything interesting. I would be embarrassed if caught gawking at celebrities in public, and if I saw one would most want to leave them alone in peace. I found your understanding of the job of reporting insightful, and I really appreciate your perspective. I never knew exactly what motivated reporters to find a good story out of the “same old story” game after game, but your view really made that clear. Thank you.

Some of your points in defense of the media needed to be said. I hope it helps.

I would like to quote Cool Hand Luke.

Nah – calling it your job don’t make it right, Boss.

Just as there are folks who probably don’t like reading my comments, I refuse to read or listen to Canzano. He’s the TMZ of Portland media and I find the behavior of TMZ and others of that ilk despicable.

There’s your difference.

I think for the most part we want our local sports reporters to be very interested in our hometown team, we want them to act like adults and we want them to give us good information.

Unfortunately our options are pretty limited there.

I happen to despise what he does with a passion. He attempts to create drama. That’s his job. It just happens that I’m not a fan of people who do that and I happen to think that society if filled with far to many people like that and they are harmful to society.

It doesn’t facilitate conversation because people are presented with black and white and they then take root in black and white without a willingness to come to a middle ground. there is no middle ground. Conversation and thoughtfulness instead becomes people yelling at each other with soundbites/slogans.

It’s not about telling portland the truth, it’s about aggravating the fans and getting reactions. It’s not about careful planning and letting players mature three years down the road, it’s about improvement in the next five minutes regardless of what that means in the future.

It’s JC’s job and I really dislike his job. His job is the only means i have of knowing JC, therefore I dislike JC.

I can’t really do anything about it so I don’t listen to his show and I don’t read his columns anymore unless someone links it in BE, and then it’s usually something that was half way decent.

Dave,

A well written piece that I enjoyed reading.

I even get the point about some fans being so overly critical that they bear the risk of descending into the nether regions. I would even buy the analogy of the lions crying out to be fed, but I also think it is entirely possible that you are too close to, "the media," yourself to really see it from a pure fans perspective, and therefore you may have a tendency to become irrationally defensive yourself.

You become an advocate for the defense of the, "the process." I don’t think that the process is a good enough excuse. What about rising above the process? What about holding to some standards that say, "I will not prostitute myself in order to feed the lions?"

I hate to be lied to. And although you say you do not feel these pied pipers don’t go so far as to say or print what they know to be false; I do not agree. You infer there is always an out, always an excuse, sort of like the layers of an onion with no absolute truth. That is excellent rhetoric, and it is true that ultimate truth is almost impossible to come by, but I will not agree that that sinking feeling in one’s gut is not readily available. People know when they are going against their own consciences. Readers, fans, can perceive when media members are going too far for self serving reasons.

And don’t we all hate to be patronized? I don’t care if I am at church, at my job listening to my boss, or reading an article in the newspaper. I want to hear the truth, or at least the closest thing to it that the power broker’s conscience can provide. Again, I don’t think it is unreasonable to tell people not to lie to you, or to ask not to be fed the food of scavengers.

August 30th seems far away from the start of the season. Yet September 1st makes it seem just around the corner.

I actually enjoy the rest of the media. Yes, from time to time they say something out of line or incorrect, but what do you expect from someone that writes 100s of columns per year or does 100s of shows per year.

Anyway, back to JCs purpose. He was instrumental in exposing the underbelly of the Blazers transgressions earlier this decade. Way before that, he did the same thing for Bob Knight, Barry Bonds, Jerry Tarkanian, and etc. Luckily for us, the Trailblazers have turned the ship around. We don’t need a whistleblower any more. If things start going south again, then I’d love to have him back, but for right now, I think his skill are best suited elsewhere. He is wasting his strengths by staying in Portland. He could probably be much more successful, maybe even a national columnist/host if he turned his attention to an NFL team that needs to be cleaned up.

that one. Who hasn’t seen the video where he bashes KP on drafting Roy and Aldridge. Then after we draft Oden he does the “bitter” flip flop. Some media really does have a bias. If it were up to Stephen A Smith he’d have a show dedicated to talking about Stephon Marbury. The topic could be the Blazers and he’ll start talking about the Knicks.

must b a slow day in blazerland.

<3

S

It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, “Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe,” or “Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet.” They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority.

-G. K. Chesterton

I think this is true in sports journalism as well. Perhaps it is less pronounced. Especially locally. But I still see it. The sensational is reported with much more vigor than the ordinary. Still, we see the ordinary lives of our Blazers in Local Sports Journalism. But that’s because they’re celebrity. That in itself makes them the unusual to which Chesterton refers.

Can you find one, immovable, incontrovertible truth…even a small one?

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Yes, the team that has the most points at the end of the game wins

Do media folks make up stories to get attention or help/hurt someone?

yes

Fans (and editors) are like that Venus fly trap in Little Shop of Horrors

“Feed me”

I’m inclined to agree with Dave’s view that journalists like Quick are doing a job, and often deserve to be cut a little slack. His role in our constructed world of basketball fandom is to give us a behind the scenes look at what goes on day to day within the organization. Feed the kitty, etc. Canzano’s role is different. A few years ago (when the 200 level corner seats where still mostly empty) Canzano sat down to chatted with us for 10 minutes. There was already longstanding animosity in our group from his Duck coverage, but Canzano was very pleasant and it was nice to talk Blazers with him. But that was real life, not Blazer Fan World. In Blazer Fan World we love the Blazers and hate the L*kers. With passion. In real life maybe I’d like Pau Gasol and not like Rudy, I have no idea. As a fan it’s the complete opposite. In our fan world Canzano plays the role of the antagonist, and he does it well. In this sense the vitriol on BE is justified, earned, deserved. Cursing him on the street would be inexcusable. We’re “inside the arena” so to speak. Canzano’s role as antagonist cements Blazer Fan unity by heightening the “us vs. them” mentality. In the upcoming season there will be heated arguments over issues like PT for Miller v. Blake or Oden v. Pryz. Canzano will write and article suggesting we trade LMA, or something equally inane. We’ll all step back and agree, Canzano sucks! For that, we can thank him.

This drives me to the snack food drawer and away from the TV faster than anything. TV personality X says/asks, “It looks like you came out aggressive in the first quarter, was that the game plan?” Well, duh! (sorry, Rebecca) That’s ALWAYS the game plan! It’s just sometimes the players don’t actually do that. But the player with the mike in his face is obligated to say, “Yes, coach wanted us to come out aggressive.” And we learn absolutely zero from the interview.

Or my personal favorite, “You had a great game tonight as a team, was the plan to get everyone involved?” Media darlings, the plan is always to get everyone involved – and then whoever is actually scoring gets more of the involvement. The plan is never to give Brandon the ball for 48 minutes and go 4 down while he isolates. That may be the plan on key possessions at the end of the game. But please – we suit up 5 players for a reason.

Just once, I’d like to hear a question with some intelligence to it such as, “It looked like you were switching on the pick and roll early, and that wasn’t working too well – so you started to play through the picks. Was that an on the fly – on the court call, or did Nate change the defense?”

It seems to me that the reporters often treat as morons, and while some of us are, my guess is way more are not than they give us credit for. And by treating us that way, those of us who are morons never get any smarter about the game.

is that he was getting quotes from a certain “biased” GM that was a former Blazer employee and now has an axe to grind. Using statements such as, “one Western Conference GM says”, is just wrong. What do other Western Conference GMs have to say? Did you even bother to get their opinion? Or did they give a conflicting answer so the choice was to not print their quote, because it would have contradicted the story? To me that’s manipulative and deceptive. He ends up being nothing more than a tool for a GM’s bitter grapes, rather than coming across as “accomplished” and “mentally agile”.

There is a difference between truth and perception. In my early adulthood, in everything there had the be one truth. There was a right way and every differing opinion was wrong. Ah.. those were the days!

I still forget at times, but what I have come to appreciate is that regarding people and events there are uncountable perceptions and each perception may claim itself as truth. In nearly all cases that the truth is never fully known. When the perceptions of the majority align sufficiently, action is taken for the corporate decisions such as laws and regulations. When perceptions of fans align sufficiently, there is a broader clamor for action. But rarely do two people that think some action is necessary agree completely on the causes or reasons for such actions.

So the media bring us informed perceptions. They differ from one another, allowing us to either choose the one who agrees most with our own perceptions or strike out against the ones who we disagree with.

But not so fast….. media can and do deliberately omit the other side as pointed out by Dave as well. It is when the other side (hidden) would significantly alter the perception of the readers that we begin to form judgments about that media person. The same is true of you and me. We want to make a case and rarely present the other side for our readers. So why is this different? Because the media have nearly exclusive access that we are denied. They are expected to represent (pool theory) the information in a non-opinionated way with all of their perspectives. ESPN and other cable channels have been a huge catalyst recent years to sell sensationalism. They needed to wrench us away from the near-dominance of the national networks and it worked. Wikipedia has a good article on sensationalism.

Sensationalism is a manner of being extremely controversial, loud, or attention grabbing. It is especially applied to the emphasis of the unusual or atypical. It is also a form of theatre

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In the extreme case, the media would report the news if it makes a good story, without much regard for the factual accuracy or social relevance.

Such stories are often perceived (rightfully, or mistakenly) as partisan or biased due to the sensational nature in which they are reported. A media piece may report on a political figure in a biased way or present one side of an issue while deriding another, or neutrally, it may simply include sensational aspects such as zealots, doomsayers and/or junk science. Complex subjects and affairs are often subject to sensationalism. Exciting and emotionally charged aspects can be drawn out without providing elements such as pertinent background, investigative, or contextual information needed for the viewer to form his or her opinion on the subject.

But wait – here is the other side from the same article.

It is difficult, therefore, to resist the conclusion – however unpleasant and unfashionable – that the bulk of the blame for the amount of sensationalism that continues to appear in the news rests not only with media corporations, no matter how greedy, but with our natures

There is a good discussion of the reality of viewers in sensationalism in broadcasts which continues.

Thompson (1999) explains that the term ‘mass’ which is connected to broadcasting, suggests a ‘vast audience of many thousands, even millions of passive individuals’. When sensationalism used through broadcasting is combined with this concept of the passive mass audience, it is assumed the audience consumes all information fed to them. However Thompson continues that the recipients of a message, no matter how sensationalized it is, ’ make with it what they will, and the producer is not there to elaborate or to correct possible misunderstanding’ (1999:195). Thus it is the misinterpretation of the broadcast audience as passive consumers which is problematic for the use of sensationalism. (Thompson, John (June 22, 1999). “The Media and Modernity”)

This is what I see mostly from Blazersedge: not passively accepting or denying wholly the perspectives given by the media but using them as catalysts to generate discussion. The time and opportunity is here to more fully explore what the media bring to our attention. Each poster can contribute and often does another perspective to add to our understand just as Dave says -

The more slices you have the more complete the picture becomes.

Food for perspective indeed.

I posted same in other fanpost, but no response yet….