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The Press Provokes Unnecessary Controversy Between LeBron James and Charles Barkley

By Rick Karcher, Michael McCann, Geoffrey Rapp, Greg Skidmore, and Howard Wasserman

Does today's journalism environment naturally provoke reaction or is provocation itself the real aim? Today's attention-grabbing news headline (and it's all over ESPN this morning), "LeBron James Calls Barkley 'Stupid' for Criticizing Him," demonstrates that oftentimes it's the latter. Apparently, Charles Barkley commented on Dan Patrick's radio show that James isn't showing respect for Cleveland fans and his teammates by discussing his possible free agency following the 2010 season, and said "If I was LeBron James, I would shut the hell up." Thereafter, an AP reporter cornered James to provoke a response to Barkley's comment, to which James responded, "He's stupid." In tomorrow's paper, we will undoubtedly hear about what Barkley has to say about James' response. Oh boy, I can hardly wait.

Forget about who is right or wrong in this media-created tiff. Is this a proper function of journalism? Does journalism ethics even exist today? (and I don't mean to ask that question cynically) Some would dismiss journalism ethics as creating ambiguous standards. Some would say journalism ethics are outdated concepts in an internet/technology era. Some would say the press is just giving the public what it wants. Some would say that this is information and, therefore, the public should have it (even if it is purely entertainment, in other words, "infotainment"). Some would go so far as to say that journalism ethics is a meaningless topic in light of the First Amendment. And some have no idea what journalism ethics issue is even at issue in this press release. As noted by the Committee of Concerned Journalists:

?Journalism is a form of cartography: it creates a map for citizens to navigate society. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping or being disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map....a journalism overwhelmed by trivia and false significance ultimately engenders a trivial society.?

In my recent law review article titled, "Tort Law and Journalism Ethics," which will be published by Loyola University Chicago Law Journal in the spring, I discuss the negative impact of the proliferation of tabloid journalism into the mainstream news media and how today's tabloid journalism oftentimes seeks to promote and instigate negativity and negative reactions among the subjects of the article as well as the readers of the article. Here, the press is primarily motivated by one thing: to provoke an unnecessary controversy. The media pits James against Barkley, causing readers to join in the negativity and to ultimately draw a conclusion that one of them is right and the other is wrong (i.e. that either Barkley is right that James should "shut the hell up" or that James is right that Barkley is "stupid"). What does society gain from exposure to such negativity and bickering? Unfortunately, as long as today's profit-driven mainstream news media is primarily motivated by advertising dollars and a quest for ratings it will keep feeding us more of it in the form of infotainment.

Full post as published by Sports Law Blog on November 29, 2008 (boomark / email).