Adam Clark Week 5 post

I really did not agree or enjoy the article by Kevin Blackistone whatsoever. People want to talk about how the newsroom is dominated by the white man and they aren’t letting any black people or women in. You can make this point all you want, but the bottom line and what it comes down to is interest. How do we know that black people and women just don’t want to do this job and are flat out uninterested in it? I would love to see a statistic that showed the number of black people and the number of women that interviewed for newsroom jobs and see how many were actually turned away. I bet it wouldn’t be that high. It just comes down to interest in the job and the field and if that is not there, then there is nothing that can be done about it.

 

To say that because the white man runs the newsroom is the reason black athletes are victimized in the news is absurd to me. Yes there is a higher chance that a black athlete is going to be criticized more heavily than a white one because of the percentage of them playing in a respective sport. The reason they seem to be victimized is because they do it to themselves and this is most prevalent in the NFL. All the DUI’s, drug charges and reports of theft are associated with black athletes. You rarely ever hear of a white athlete getting caught doing something like that. The only instance I can think of is with Ben Roethlisberger and the sexual assault charges against him. He was heavily scrutinized, paid his price and moved on. I think sports teams are too forgiving when their players have a run in with the law. There are just too many occurrences of that now and yes, the majority of the time they involve black athletes. If they don’t want scrutiny, than they should stop getting in trouble with the law, doing an entire dance routine when they score a touchdown or have a mega slam dunk. They put themselves in that spotlight, not because of a white male dominated news room.

In the other article, yes I agree with it when they say things like “Sports journalists don’t address the issues. They just revolve it around the players legacy.” Blogs do create this atmosphere is poor sports journalism, but it is just evolving with the times and people are unwilling to accept them into the journalism realm.  Any time there was a steroid situation in baseball all the reports focused on were how it would impact their legacy. More does need to be done in the addressing of issues, especially with steroids in baseball. I know MLB can’t do everything about steroid prevention and if the news room can help that, than they need to get on it and do better, more addressed reporting and not looking out for the player.