Crusade of Cynicism

As I've discovered, I'm not too old for 12-hour Dungeons & Dragons sessions. I started running a game on Thursdays. Last week, we started at 8 p.m. and ended at 8 p.m. It was fun, to be sure, but it was also quite exhausting. And of course, it threw my sleep schedule completely out of whack. So I'm working on about four hours of sleep because that whole class thing forced me to get up at a decent hour.

I was watching SportsCenter yesterday, and they had a feature of sorts on Bob Knight, the former coach of Indiana and the current coach about Texas Tech (this isn't really about sports, I promise). The report was filed by Jeremy Schaap, one of ESPN's top "issue" reporters and the son of sports journalism icon Dick Schaap. Part of the way through the story, Jeremy mentions the interview he had with Knight after he was fired from Indiana University. It shows Knight getting surly with Schaap and refusing to shake his hand after the interview concluded. Makes Bobby K look pretty bad, right?
Well, the voiceover immediately says something along the line of the thing that stuck out to him (Schaap) the most was Knight's "personal attack" on him (Knight was getting mad for Schaap interrupting him and said, "You've got a long way to go to be like your father"). And this is the problem I have. First of all, it wasn't really an insult. But Schaap is a whiny sissy, and he frequently injects himself into the story. Schaap has developed a history of interviewees getting hostile with him. Is it asking the tough questions, or is it provocation? It's a fine line, to be sure, but I don't believe he comes down on the correct side of it.
He's also one of those people who feel the need to tell the viewers what they should think, why something is so terrible and that you should be outraged, offended, or saddened by it. And I hate that. Schaap is emblematic of the generation of journalists that make the story about themselves as much as the angle. You get their opinions on things. You see them "confronting" their interviews.
If you've seen "Shattered Glass," you know what I'm talking about (and if you haven't, do yourself a favor and watch it). There's this class of reporters out there that are trying to make themselves more important than the story. They think they're the vanguards of what they cover. The importance isn't what they cover, but the fact that they're covering it.
That is wrong.
Journalism hasn't really changed in theory. The landscape of the profession has- as much as any has in the last 10 to 15 years- but the idea has not. Report the story, present the facts. The problem is that people have come along who have twisted the game and have stuck themselves between the truth and the consumer. And in the process, that truth gets distorted. The idea is that the story speaks for itself. Now, the reporters are speaking for themselves. That ideal of objectivity (which I think is crap, but that's another rant) gets destroyed in the process.
That's why I love how the BBC does things. British journalism, sadly, is far superior to American journalism in some respects. In the US, journalism is all about the story. What's the angle? What's the hook? In England, it's about the facts. Here's what's going on, here's what a couple people said... draw your own conclusions. And you know what? It works. It's more reliable. It's more trustworthy.
This is the system we used to have. Why don't we go back to it? Our journalists shouldn't be the guardians of morality or culture. I don't care what Neil Cavuto thinks about the Anna Nicole Smith saga- or, for that matter, why she's dominating the headlines. But once again, the media's obsession with stupid celebrity stories is another rant.