Sports journalism is an endangered species. But according to Dan Le Batard, it’s already gone extinct.
The debate around sports journalism has been accentuated in recent years as more leagues become business partners with media entities and any critical or negative coverage encounters obstacles. But the practice of reporting is facing a squeeze from not just media companies being in business (or even being partly-owned) by the leagues they cover. It’s also squeezed by networks and modern media valuing entertainment and debate and theatrics over real reporting.
On Monday’s edition of The Dan Le Batard Show, the eponymous host addressed a couple of stories surrounding sports journalism. First was the controversy over ESPN NBA reporter Shams Charania spoiling the planned MVP announcement for Amazon and upsetting the crew there when he revealed Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s honor ahead of time. Then there was Jaylen Brown’s ongoing war with Stephen A. Smith after the pair have traded insults and threats towards one another.
Le Batard has talked extensively about what Stephen A. Smith and the rise of debate culture has meant for sports journalism and the entire media industry over the years. But this time he turned his focus to streamers like Amazon and the current sports landscape that puts entertainment and access to athletes above all else.
“They don’t need to do journalism. The people objecting to Shams there, where were the journalists on that screenshot when you saw Udonis, Steve Nash, Blake Griffin, Dirk, and Taylor Rooks. Where was the journalism? Taylor’s the journalism but Taylor is the way that athletes would like the media to behave. Come in here, ask me questions, get along, don’t say anything inflammatory, don’t be too critical, celebrate us. Why does Prime have to do journalism? Where is the journalism on Prime? Where is it?” Le Batard asked.
“I’m telling you in the documentary sphere that all of these big corporations are seeing less and less importance in doing things that are going to bother the masses because there are uncomfortable truths. They’d rather do antiseptic stuff than do the stuff that’s a little dangerous because it’s the truth. I happen to want the undistilled truth. I want it pure. But that’s not what everybody wants and I come from a different time,” Le Batard said.
Sports documentaries are an entirely different animal when it comes to questions of journalism. The wide majority of major sports docs are produced by the subject at this rate and they’ve become increasingly worthless when it comes to packing any investigative or revealing punch. They are now largely vanity projects and fancy forms of public relations.
But when it comes to streamers and their increasing presence in the sports space, it’s interesting to separate them from ESPN and other sports media companies who are in the business 24/7 and have long histories of doing reporting and journalism. The likes of Amazon, Netflix, and Google don’t employ reporters and insiders. For now, it seems as if they are there to merely present the games and make them look as good and as entertaining as possible. That’s why there’s such a conflict between what Amazon is doing and what ESPN and Shams are doing, issues of insiderdom culture not withstanding.
But as the streamers grow in prominence and journalists occupy less and less space, Dan Le Batard sees it as a continuation of a trend that’s been going on for quite some time. Sports journalism isn’t just dying according to him, it’s already gone.
“I’d like that time to live forever. It’s dead. It’s not dying, it’s dead. These streamers have no interest, none of them, none of them, have any interest in doing journalism and that’s why I’m telling you this war, the journalists have already lost it,” Le Batard declared.
Sports journalism isn’t necessarily dead in its entirety. Pablo Torre just won a Pulitzer after all. But it is vastly different than what it was even five or ten years ago, let alone what it was when ESPN was airing Outside the Lines on a regular basis. And ESPN hired Ben Strauss and others from the Washington Post specifically to do more big journalism stories. But when it comes to networks preferring entertainment or news and what they choose to showcase, that decision was made a long time ago.
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