Ten Yards, Loss of Down For Clipping

Jarrett Murphy, in the Village Voice today, complains that the media was quick to cover the infamous NBA brawl, and to put it into saturation rotation. He enumerates the coverage in newspapers and TV broadcasts, inferring that it was as salacious as it was unwarranted. (Not "hard news!" Not hard news! Foul! Is anyone listening?) He suggests that this is an example of the media adjusting to changing times, and taking on a story with heavy "moral" overtones and ramifications.

As a kicker—an afterthought, really—Murphy grouses that it would be nice if journalists today would apply the same hard questions to more serious moral catastrophes like "the war in Iraq, the scenes of mad shoppers on the first day of the Christmas shopping season, or other stories not featuring sweaty athletes." (One wonders if he reads his own paper, or values it so little as to not count it in his survey of big media.)

See, this is the type of lazy criticism of "the press" that puts us into a lather. Murphy carefully compiles all of the most egregious examples of reporting on the Pacers-Pistons brawl, and then expects us to just accept his broad generalization that no one anywhere has ever asked serious questions about Iraq—or, for that matter, Christmas shopping. Our esteemed reporter might argue that you can't prove a negative—that is, it's hard to enumerate all the articles that have NOT been written. But that's only because he hasn't tried very hard. In this day and age, when anyone bitches that a story has not been adequately written about, we have an automatic response: That's just because you haven't looked very hard. (The more subtle and precise answer is this: That's just because the story hasn't reached the critical mass where it assaults you everywhere you turn—like the NBA brawl story. It's not that the story hasn't been written. It's that the reading public has not cared. Sad, but true.)

We're not crazy about media reporting or media criticisim—mostly because we can't escape the feeling that no one really cares, out there in the real world. And then there is the more substantive reason: Media criticism is often the most trite, navel-gazing, uninteresting, and self-righteous sort of writing a person can have the pleasure of not reading.—The Editor in Cheese