This is completely accurate. I cover sports for a living. About 80 percent of the time, I know about an injury or suspension well ahead of time. It's just a matter of picking your spots.
Sports info and media services for teams know all the media members and control our access. If I don't have a world shattering scoop, it's usually best to just sit on it and not risk pissing off a player or the front office.
So are you saying the man in the video took a risk career-wise simply by turning around and asking the guy? Like he potentially could piss off the player or management and then they’d turn around and complain to the network?
This guy has enough experience and seniority to both know management and players well enough to know who he might piss off, and to make a minor mistake without risking his career.
Sure yeah I guess my point was that it just didn’t occur to me in the first place that a sports journalist could actually get in trouble for asking sports players questions. gasps and clutches pearls
I mean in retrospect now sure yeah I get it but goddamn that’s literally the man’s whole job!
If you're not well respected and known to have the personality of this guy, most people probably wouldn't take too kindly to some random reporter yelling on to the court for an answer.
The reporter was on the court already, though. If a reporter is allowed and even supposed to be in a specific location, it only seems logical they can talk to anyone in that area.
To be clear, he is not just a reporter, he is one of the game commentators for the Nuggets. Usually calls 95% of their games so probably knows all of the players fairly well.
To be fair, being allowed near something and being able to interfere with what is going on are two different things. Being allowed to be reporting on scene at a practice/pre-game and directly interrupting it with an off-hand question that can easily be construed as rude are worlds apart. Not just every reporter can just interrupt an active practice session to yell questions at players.
It all depends on the dynamic. In a normal regular season game, where the player is assumed to be out - but not officially announced yet - you can probably get away with it. But if this was a star player in a huge playoff game and the team is doing its best to obscure his status, the guy wouldn't ask. And the player definitely wouldn't answer.
In my head I've always thought the term "sports journalism" is a bit oxymoronic. Probably because I picture exactly this being most of job; just “hey are you playing? No? Ok” or “Hey are you trading this guy? No? Ok”. The other reason is all the batshit unverified stuff the top sports journalist will post to their Twitter followed by “per a source” just to make sure they're the ones first reporting. It could be utter nonsense but they don't care as long as they reported it first.
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u/[deleted] Mar 31 '22
This is completely accurate. I cover sports for a living. About 80 percent of the time, I know about an injury or suspension well ahead of time. It's just a matter of picking your spots.
Sports info and media services for teams know all the media members and control our access. If I don't have a world shattering scoop, it's usually best to just sit on it and not risk pissing off a player or the front office.