It’s even worse than they admit
A scandal among "journalists" prompted a rare public apology—but it only scratched the surface
Last week, FOX News sports reporter Charissa Thompson publicly admitted to making up quotes in published articles that she attributed to coaches when they failed to respond in time to meet publication deadlines. She eventually apologized, after drawing condemnation from an entire industry of widely co-opted writers & editors seemingly unwilling to look in the mirror.
It’s entirely fair to criticize a journalist for inventing quotes, or for failing to immediately apologize when their ethical lapses are discovered. But those important critiques observe merely the tips of a vast, still overlooked iceberg.
Even setting aside the consistent role of journalists as propagandists dedicated to promoting disinformation favoring Wall Street and the Pentagon at the cost of human rights and life on Earth, further problems abound—not the least of which is the unfortunate use of the term “journalism” to describe reporting on ultimately predatory industries that reduces “journalism” to public relations and unpaid advertising.
In this article, I’ll focus on writers and so-called “journalists” who cover sports. Those who cover entertainment generally demonstrate the same pattern, but I’ll save a case study expanding the pattern beyond sports for another post.
The scandal in plain sight
Making up quotes is a violation of press ethics, full stop. There is simply no justification for a reporter putting words in the mouths of sources who are fully capable of speaking for themselves, and the institutions they help lead.
Many critics leapt on the chance to observe Thompson’s admission of ethical failure, especially since her initial failure to acknowledge its severity appeared so painfully oblivious. Yet most critiques of Thompson reflected impressive myopia, focusing on obvious problems while overlooking those looming in the shadows.
Bread & circus to opiate the masses
Many contemporary observers of corruption within the pharmaceutical industry might be surprised to discover that the pattern of opiates addicting people en masse is far from a recent problem. In another century, the British Empire fought a series of wars with China to establish its power to run drugs, specifically opium, and reap profits by subjecting an entire civilian population to addiction despite the Chinese government’s attempts to criminalize the trade.
The opium trade, and the imperial wars to secure it, were not only commercial enterprises for the British, but also political ones. The opium trade helped remedy a European trade deficit driven by Chinese tea exports, filled the coffers of the British crown, and also helped cultivate docility among Chinese subjects of British colonialism. British military dominance over China eventually led the British to gain sovereignty over Hong Kong from 1841 until 1997, interrupted only by four years of Japanese occupation during the Second World War.
Observing the impacts of the opium trade on China may have helped prompt Karl Marx to observe how institutional religion has played a similar role, convincing downtrodden people to accept their lot in this life based on promises about one to come. (Incidentally, one of my favorite songs by Arrested Development, who wrote powerful hits including Tennessee and Mr. Wendal, is Fishin 4 Religion. The song offers a powerful depiction of this pattern emerging in the Bible Belt)
Sports journalism, as well as entire industries of professional sports, play the same roles today that opium did in China 200 years ago.
“Journalism” as public relations
Actual journalism is rooted in adversarial accountability: it aims to document events in order to enable public accountability.
But what if reporters document events involving figures who don’t have any public authority? What, exactly, is the point of “journalism” about industries, beyond simply promoting them?
Sports “journalism” abandons any pretense of accountability. Like entertainment “journalism,” it serves nothing beyond promoting a for-profit industry.
Journalism empowers and enables democracy. But writing and broadcasts about industries, from sports to entertainment, instead serve capitalism.
Standing above the law
Most industries are subject to federal laws governing competition that aim to protect consumers and the marketplace. Laws preventing monopolists from abusing their market power are the basis for lawsuits recently waged by the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice against corporate defendants including Google, Facebook / Meta, and Amazon.
Antitrust laws have been applied in earlier eras to everything from independent booksellers to railway bridges, and have been held to prohibit everything from price fixing by horizontal competitors to predatory pricing by a single enterprise. Monopolists have been held liable for violating antitrust laws even for simply denying competitors access to facilities deemed essential to enable competition (like a bridge over a river, or a national telecommunications network).
Yet sports leagues are generally immune from these laws—not for any defensible purpose, but because they wield enough influence to have effectively bent the law in their favor. Professional baseball gained its exemption from antitrust laws due to the largesse of the Supreme Court, which in 1922 unanimously (and absurdly) held that professional baseball did not affect interstate trade or commerce, despite Major League Baseball today generating over $10 billion in annual revenue predicated on interstate sales of items including merchandise, tickets, and telecasts.
As sports leagues generated major revenue for broadcast outlets, the industries of sports and entertainment came together to effectively bribe Members of Congress into granting them statutory exemptions. In 1961, a federal court ruled against the National Football League and CBS in an antitrust case brought by the government. That victory prompted Congress to pass the Sports Broadcast Act (SBA) in the very same year, immunizing sports leagues and broadcast outlets from antitrust scrutiny.
Today, the NFL’s arrangement with outlets to whom it grants exclusive broadcasting rights is facing a new challenge. The plaintiffs, including public establishments and individual subscribers to DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket package, won an initial victory on appeal a few years ago. Crucial to that decision was the distinction between broadcast outlets (which were covered by the 1961 SBA) and cable (which had not yet emerged and which the law did not explicitly address). But the case remains in litigation, and the league’s antitrust exemption survives for now.
It’s not only the case that sports “journalism” abandons ethical journalism to instead embrace what amounts to unpaid advertising. It particularly represents unpaid advertising on behalf of an industry that has captured policymakers and bent the law to favor of the wealthy owners of teams.
The short end of the stick
Fans watch sports in order to observe players. Yet, ironically, it is players who have been most consistently abused by the leagues for which they play.
What could better reflect fascism than forcing celebrities onto the sidelines when they decline to participate in the public performance of hypocritical nationalistic rituals? The pledge of allegiance references “liberty and justice for all,” but both values have actually been in short supply across the United States since its founding over two centuries ago.
Many sports, particularly contact sports like football, routinely subject participants to serious injury, including traumatic brain injuries that often lead to devastating cumulative impacts. A study of deceased former NFL players found that nearly 90% of them suffered from degenerative brain disease.
For any industry to so brutally abuse its workforce is unconscionable. Professional athletes are exceptionally skilled & dedicated human beings whose are used by sports league and effectively discarded after their bodies wear out. Some endure years of painful symptoms including headaches, dizziness, and memory loss, as well as impairment of sight, hearing, or speech.
Beyond health impacts, players often also lose their rights when putting on a professional team uniform. The right to player speech has been prolifically policed by team owners.
For instance, former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick was notoriously benched for daring to silently observe the discrimination and profiling that continue to drive policing across the country.
Kaepernick was not the only player silenced by a sports league, nor is the NFL the only league guilty of having silenced its players who speak out about injustices.
In 1996, Denver Nuggets point guard Mahmoud Abdul Raouf was suspended by the NBA for simply refusing to stand for the national anthem. He eventually worked out a compromise enabling him to return to the court, but at the cost of his right to silent self-expression.
What could better reflect fascism than forcing celebrities onto the sidelines when they decline to participate in the public performance of hypocritical nationalistic rituals? The pledge of allegiance references “liberty and justice for all,” but both values have actually been in short supply across the United States since its founding over two centuries ago.
To be fair, many professional sports players are highly compensated. Many others, however, toil in relative obscurity, risking injuries and losing their rights in exchange for the chance to play the sports they love, and that others love to watch them play.
In any case, a player’s compensation has no relationship to this critique of sports leagues and their various efforts to dupe the public.
It’s one thing to bend Congress to the will of an industry. It’s an entirely different thing to degrade journalism and reduce it to an institutional instrument of capitalism, an industry reliant on players whom it takes advantage of, and policymakers willing to bend the law in its favor.
Fans have no say
The most fundamental purpose of journalism is to document information that empowers public decision-making. But there is no public decision-making related to sports, beyond the corrupt votes in Congress to grant legal exemptions to antitrust limits.
Sports teams are generally unaccountable to any public audience. The relocation of the Oakland A’s to Las Vegas (or of any other sports team from one city to another) proves the point. The only actors to whom sports teams are ultimately accountable are owners. That helps explain the longstanding refusal by the owner of the Washington Commanders to rename the team in light of concerns about the racial slur embedded in the team’s former name.
Two exceptions prove the general rule. The Green Bay Packers and the Boston Celtics are both publicly traded companies. Writing about the controversies within or surrounding those teams arguably serves some public purpose, since it enables stockholders to make more informed decisions. These teams offer a counterpoint to my otherwise generalizable thesis.
Beyond those two teams, fans are not stockholders: they are consumers. And “journalism” informing them about their teams, their victories, their failures, and their dramas does nothing to enable better public decisions.
It arguably enables better private decisions, such as whose jersey to buy and whether to buy a ticket to see a game or instead watch it online or even just highlights on cable news. But that is the same function performed by advertising, or consumer reviews.
Journalism is ethically committed to much more than merely that.
Paid subscribers can access a further section that examines three points of historical contrast, explains the ultimate impact of this unfortunate contemporary pattern, and explores how it has enabled continuing violations of international human rights from Gaza to America’s prisons.
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