This was my term paper for my journalism ethics class this semester.
Philadelphia quarterback Michael Vick is probably one of the more polarizing figures in the sports world today. After being convicted on federal dog fighting charges in 2007, he was sent to prison where he served a year and a half sentence before being released to a halfway house. Upon completing his term, he returned to the National Football League with the Philadelphia Eagles, where he backed up another high-profile quarterback, Donovan McNabb. McNabb was let go this past off-season with Eagles Coach Andy Reid citing that it was the best decision for the Eagles’ organization to let McNabb go. (Glazer, 2010)
Since then, Vick has taken charge of the Eagles and led them to become of the top teams in the NFC. They are even poised to make a Super Bowl run. But underneath the success and the redemption Vick likely feels for returning to glory on the gridiron, he fights everyday with the choices he made outside of football that led to his imprisonment. He faces them every day as the media constantly wants to bring it up, not letting it be ‘water under the bridge’ but rather making the story more about Vick’s character than his play on the field.
ESPN and other major sports networks, along with radio talk shows, bloggers, and magazine columnists have weighed on how they feel Vick should be depicted and have conceived their own judgments on the rise, downfall, and subsequent return of Vick. The coverage of Vick (and others like him) begs the question of whether or not African-American athletes or coaches in high stature are presented differently when they mess up as opposed to white athletes or coaches, and the ethics behind that coverage.
To fully answer this question, one has to look at the scope of American history and how things have evolved in terms of race in sports. Everyone is familiar with Jackie Robinson and his breaking the color barrier in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers. What Robinson did changed the face of how African-Americans were looked at by the media in general, not just in sports.
Since segregation was pretty much the accepted practice until the mid-1960’s, many members of the media never reported on black athletes because it wouldn’t have been proper decorum with the majority of the mainstream media being white. As time progressed and race relations improved and African-Americans were given more opportunities, the media was forced to kind of do their homework on them without having much knowledge of their background or of their culture.
During the 1980’s, when blacks began to dominate football and basketball more and more, and stars like Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan and Walter Payton were becoming household names in America, people of all origins wanted to find out more than simply how players of African-American descent performed on the court, but how they grew up and what they did to get to the point they were in as a professional athlete.
When the University of Miami began to rule college football with an iron fists in the late 1980’s, many people began to associate their supposed “thug” culture as being the norm for how African-Americans acted and conducted themselves off the field. Even though the Hurricanes were just one team, because of the strong presence of high-profile, flashy black athletes on their squad, they became the symbol of African-American culture for the media. Miami players termed it “swagger” (Corben, 2009) and some proclaimed that they invented swag. To many members of the media, that swag was what they saw as everything that was wrong with the direction sports were going, and wanted to put a stop to it.
As time progressed into the 1990’s, black athletes became cult figures among America’s youth. Everyone wanted to “be like Mike” and eat their Wheaties and “just do it” like they saw on Gatorade and Nike commercials. Meanwhile, it seemed like every time you turned on ESPN, an African-American athlete was getting arrested or was finding some kind of mischief to get in. Was it the media just reporting the facts and informing the public of what was really going on, or was it prodding and trying to uncover information on these athletes that wasn’t the business of the general public?
Just about the time these black athletes achieved rock star status in the American limelight, was the time that politicians and administrators began to lobby for more equal rights for blacks and attempted to put them on a more level playing field with whites. It wasn’t until the late 1980’s that a black quarterback won a Super Bowl, and that was Doug Williams with the Washington Redskins, a team in the Northeast portion of the United States. And there was not an African-American head coach in the NFL until 1989, when Art Shell took over for the Oakland Raiders. In a New York Times article chronicling the hiring of Shell, reporter Michael Janofsky mentioned that 60 years had passed before the first African-American coach was offered a job in the NFL. (Janofsky, 1989)Shell was quoted in the article as saying, “I don’t believe the color of my skin entered into this decision.” What Shell failed to mention was the owner of the Raiders, Al Davis, has always been one to make a rash decision or do something that he feels will get his organization talked about and put fans in the seats. His reasoning behind hiring Shell may not have been ethically strong, but instead was done for selfish interests or to create a ‘buzz’ in the NFL and get the Raiders talked about at water coolers and across the country.
One part of the United States that has never taken race relations well is the South, where slavery ruled with an iron fist for much of the country’s first century and where blacks have always felt isolated and under-appreciated. The worst racism also happened here as well. Today, the Southeastern Conference is looked at as the premier conference in college football, where the best football is played and the fastest players reside. Ironically, most of the star players and this speed that was mentioned come from African-American athletes on the 12 teams in the conference. That begs the question of why was the SEC the last conference to have an African-American head coach on its sideline? Sylvester Croom, who was also one of the conference’s first African-American players at Alabama in the early 1970’s, was hired by Mississippi State in December of 2003 to become the first African-American head coach in the SEC. (Weiss, 2003) At the time, he was only one of five African-American men to coach at college football’s highest level, Division I-A. Croom is no longer the coach there, but he set the stage for more African-American coaches to get opportunities and to be able to coach football in the SEC.
When Croom was hired, one of his top recruits, DeMario Bobo, was quoted in an ESPN article saying this, “When you’re having problems, when you have things going on at home or you’re struggling in class or people are giving you a hard time, he’ll [Croom] understand. A white coach doesn’t understand like a black coach would.” (Drehs, 2004) Bobo is trying to get the point across that he feels that he will grow more as a person and become a more exemplary student-athlete if he’s allowed to play in an environment where he knows his needs will be met and that he can relate to the person who is in a leadership role over him. It was a bold move by the Mississippi State athletic administration to take a chance on Croom when no other school in the conference would think twice about hiring an African-American head coach. It put that administration on the map as a school that was unafraid of outside opinion and made it out to be an administration that wanted to see student-athletes succeed in life and not do it to simply put fans in the seats or win championships and get more money. That happens too often in our culture today, where the easy route is taken by people who make a decision based on how it will look to other people instead of doing the right thing or doing the thing that will benefit the most people and not just a few.
Auburn University had the chance to do the same thing that Mississippi State had done following the 2008 football season. The university had just fired its coach, Tommy Tuberville, and one of the hotter coaches on the market was Buffalo Coach Turner Gill, who was black. Gill was interviewed and many felt he would be the front-runner for the job, but was eventually passed over for Gene Chizik, who had compiled a very pedestrian 5-19 record at Iowa State while Gill was taking a perennially poor Buffalo squad to bowl games the preceding two seasons. Upon Chizik being hired, Auburn was hounded with accusations of being racist and not giving a black head coach an opportunity simply because Croom had not fared as well as many hoped he would at Mississippi State. Charles Barkley, a famous NBA basketball player and Auburn alum, had this to say on Chizik’s hiring in an ESPN article. (Schlabach, 2008) “I think race was the No. 1 factor. You can say it’s not about race, but you can’t compare the two resumes and say [Chizik] deserved the job. Out of all the coaches they interviewed, Chizik probably had the worst resume.” Barkley went on to talk about how he had tried to get Auburn to hire a black head coach in basketball following the 2003-2004 and that they had removed him from the search committee and hired a white head coach, Jeff Lebo, who eventually was fired this past offseason. He also talked about how all Gill needed was an opportunity, because he mentioned that it’s tough to win consistently at a Kansas State or a New Mexico but that he could have recruited well and won at Auburn if he’d just been given a chance.
Barkley is a member of the media now, ironically, covering National Basketball Association games on TNT. Of course like any normal person, he feels pride in his alma mater and wants to see it flourish, but at the same time, he’s representing the media now and ethically, has to put his feelings for Auburn aside. This is something that he failed to do, and he gave the media a black eye for his comments on the Auburn hire. It was something that he could have avoided and he chose to lash out instead of looking at the facts, and if a journalist goes based off emotions instead of objectively looking at the situation, then he or she is probably looking at trouble. Even with it being 2010, race is still a hot-button issue in the public’s mind, and so journalists have to tread lightly in how they look at it and how they report on it, because the citizenry will also base their opinions on what they hear, read and see. If racism continues to be something that affects our culture, then
journalists will continue to give it coverage. The real challenge facing journalists is how they present the issue and to make sure to do it in an ethical manner.
Media, however, has a say in how these decisions are scrutinized and sometimes even carried out. For example, former Arkansas basketball coach Nolan Richardson had a nasty exit from the University of Arkansas where he feuded publicly with then-athletic director Frank Broyles and subsequently was fired in 2002. A lot of things that Richardson would say after games in statements in press conferences would tick Broyles off, and Broyles wanted a way to paint Richardson in a negative light in the media since Richardson was, in Broyles’ mind, putting Arkansas in a negative light in his comments. Rus Bradburd’s book, “Forty Minutes of Hell: The Extraordinary Life of Nolan Richardson,” explores how a media member handled a request from Broyles to equate the word ‘nigger’ the same way Richardson used ‘redneck.’ (Bradburd, 2010)
Obviously the reporter faced an ethical dilemma. There are two vastly different backgrounds represented with Broyles and Richardson. On one hand, Broyles is a revered figure in the state of Arkansas for winning a national championship in football and all of the fundraising he had done for the University of Arkansas. Then there’s Richardson, who won a national championship in basketball and was a trail blazer of his own accord by becoming the first African-American head coach in the SEC. The reporter, if he honors Broyles’ request, would face immense pressure from the African-American community and it would also be very unethical for a journalist to allow someone to try and advance their own agenda through that journalist’s reporting. Even if he considered Broyles a friend and a trusted source, I don’t think he would have been able to weather the hit his credibility as a journalist would have undoubtedly taken. Journalists aren’t employed to pay favors to people or try and paint someone in a negative light in order to ensure that person’s firing or land a major blow on that person’s image. Journalists, as stated in the Society of Professional Journalists’ code, are to seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently and be accountable for what they report. (SPJ Code of Ethics) They aren’t there to start rumors, display their own personal beliefs, intentionally embarrass someone, or advance someone’s agenda. The fact that some journalists are letting those things become a part of their daily routine is the reason why a lot of the mainstream public is becoming more wary and cautious of reporters and the journalism sector as a whole.
Years from now, people will look at the Michael Vick saga and be able to judge it more effectively because time will have passed and it won’t be fresh in everyone’s minds anymore. The thing is, people will likely judge their opinions based on the coverage of Vick before and during his imprisonment, and then his return to football. What journalists say about Vick will have a large impact on how his legacy is viewed by the American public. If what they say isn’t ethically sound and ethically based, but rather their own personal opinion or advancing the agenda of an organization, then journalists are doing a disservice to their readership and failing as journalists. The fairer and more accurate that journalists present the Michael Vick story and other ones similar to it, the more credibility journalism will earn back.
Bibliography
Bradburd, R. (2010). Forty Minutes of Hell: The Extraordinary Life of Nolan Richardson. New York: HarperCollins.
Corben, B. (Director). (2009). The U [Motion Picture].
Drehs, W. (2004, February 10). Black History Month. Retrieved from espn.com: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blackhistory/news/story?id=1728831
Glazer, J. (2010, April 5). Fox Sports. Retrieved from FoxSports.com: http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/Glazer-Philadelphia-Eagles-trade-Donovan-McNabb-to-Washington-Redskins
Janofsky, M. (1989, October 4). Sports. Retrieved from NYTimes.Com: http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/04/sports/shell-is-first-black-coach-in-nfl-since-20-s.html
Schlabach, M. (2008, December 16). Lobbying for Gill, alum Barkley says Auburn should have hired black coach. Retrieved from espn.com: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=3770769
SPJ Code of Ethics. (n.d.). Retrieved December 9, 2010, from Society of Professional Journalists: http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
Weiss, D. (2003, December 4). Sports. Retrieved from NYDailyNews.com: http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/sports/2003/12/04/2003-12-04_croom_s_task_won_t_be_easy.html
