Curious Media Quotes – It is all about perspective

Media NCS Basketball98

If NC State wins, I am happy and I think that it is a “good thing.”

If NC State loses, I am sad and think that it is a “bad thing.”

I admit it. I am also just a fan. I am not a journalist. You are reading StateFansNation that admits our bias. You are not reading something from a site that presents itself or strives to achieve impartiality as a part of journalistic integrity.

With this said, I am shocked at how many news organizations have allowed their reporters to deterioriate the quality of their stations due to gross informality and bias.

Let me give you a specific example as a differentiating distinction.

When a good media outlet like WRAL-TV starts reporting a story, they usually set the perspective of the story up front. For example, after Saturday night’s NC State win over Miami they may have said something like, “It was the type of game that NC State fans seemed to experience in Reynolds Coliseum with regularity but that has been void in the RBC Center. But, on Saturday night Wolfpack fans were treated to an ACC Classic in a win that Sidney Lowe and his program desperately needed and the results were almost unbelievable. Jeff Gravely has more”.

You see, they set the perspective of the story as NC State-centric. They didn’t PRESUME/ASSUME that their audience were NC State fans nor did they take a personally vested position in the Wolfpack.

Before I get into this, let me explain that I understand that folks at the WWL like Stuart Scott have made delivering sports news with obscene homerism more accepted. That doesn’t mean that I have to like it. But, Scott’s localization of his love for Carolina using his presence on a national network is almost ‘accepted’ because it is his ‘schtick’. He tries to be a Carolina fan. Additionally, he ADMITS it; he doesn’t try to hide it or deny it to the public or to himself. This is different than the kind of inexcusable hidden bias that many reporters and media outlets deny because they are too biased or too dumb to recognize it. (The mainstream example here is the grossly liberal leaning mainstream media that haughtily proclaim that they cover the news in an unbiased manner. LOL!)

So, after State’s big win on Saturday night I had the ‘pleasure’ of watching a couple of sports highlight shows and was disgusted and perplexed at the manner in which the news was delivered. I thought that I would share two very disturbing situations with you.

(1) On “Sports Saturday Night” CBS WBTV-3 in Charlotte I could not believe how downtrodden and sad the woman (whose name I never got) was who delivered the Carolina-Maryland highlights Her tone of voice, little comments and general perspective were all massively pro-Carolina without just coming out and admitting it. This is where I get pissed off and actually can accept Stuart Scott; because Scott ADMITS his bias and does not hide it or ususally imbed it into something that otherwise is presented as hard news or impartial.

I know that you can’t get the sypmathetic tone and variance of emphasis on certain words from reading the following quote so I tried to give you a little commentary in parantheticals. Note the difference that WBTV just assumes that everyone is a Carolina fan and it was just a bad day for everyone! Just read this as if you were a Carolina fan delivering the news to TarheelNation and you will hit it dead on:

It is certainly the day fans knew would come eventually but wish it never did (so sad tone). North Carolina (with increasing excitement in the voice) the number one team in the country falling to Maryland at home today and breaking that undefeated streak at 18-0.

Gary Williams and Maryland – unbelievable to watch there (said with a little surprised laced prominently with disappointment) – upsetting the #1 team in the country 82-80.

Then they switched over to the Duke-Clemson highlights and started with a picture of the crowd before the game cheering the UNC score making the commment “guess who was happy about it?” in a sarcastic tone. Then she threw in a snide “Go figure?” while starting delivering the Duke highlights with significantly less conviction and emotional investment as Carolina’s highlights were delivered. OF COURSE Duke’s reaction to Carolina’s loss is worth reporting when you have a core focus on UNC and don’t realize that it is irrelevant if you aren’t so focused on the Tarheels.

Ultimately, Duke “edged out of Clemson” when the Blue Devils won by thirteen points! I guess it is all in your perspective.

By the way, after this chic admitted that she went to UNC-Charlotte during their highlights, they showed some of State’s highlights and didn’t even show Gavin Grant’s steal and winning basket! There was more significantly amazement that Carolina lost to Maryland than the manner in which NC State won.

(2) The second experience totally threw me. During ESPN’s “opening tip” to their late “Midnight Madness” show that started at 12:40am ET host Scott Reese made the following quote:

“Unbelievable finish with NC State and Miami. And I mean unbelievable in not such a good way. You’ll understand when you see how this one wound up.”

What the *#^&# does that mean?

I am not kidding here. I am not leaving out any words. The only people in America that would think that the amazing game and finish on Saturday night was “not such a good” finish would be the dozen Miami basketball fans that exist, most gang members in America, and people that hate NC State. Not only would NC State fans think that they finish was great, but any impartial college basketball fan without a dog in the fight must have been scratching their hids in bewilderment when they finally saw the highlights and wondered what was NOT GOOD about that finish?

I don’t know Scott Resse. Don’t have a clue. But, he did a great job of providing us with a crystal clear example of just piss poor reporting on Saturday night.

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Media NCS Basketball

98 Responses to Curious Media Quotes – It is all about perspective

  1. RabidWolf 01/22/2008 at 4:45 PM #

    Off topic (sorry, guys), but has anyone else heard the news that MASN has WON IT’S LAWSUIT AGAINST TIME WARNER CABLE!! A Federal judge has decided that TWC was obviously biased against the mid-atlantic sports network in order to promote it’s own regional coverage. It’s about time someone put TWC in it’s place!!

    Again, sorry for the hijack, but I thought I’d share the good news.

  2. Ismael 01/22/2008 at 4:46 PM #

    Dire and Billy, what’s weird, and i mean weirdddd, is the last 2 weeks when i go to the supermarket or wherever, i see an amazing number of people with Duke jersey’s on, and it looks like they’ve been letting each other borrow it on different days, i mean, its the same one!!

    Fairweather fans at their finest. You never saw this stuff last year.

  3. branjawn 01/22/2008 at 4:50 PM #

    off topic, but Heath Ledger is dead. RIP

  4. #44 17 24 01/22/2008 at 4:51 PM #

    Speaking of bias, did anyone see the the new ESPN College Gameday commercial? Its the one with Digger Phelps, Jay Bilas and Reese Something’s heads on a dude out on a date. Both Bilas and Digger mention Carolina and Indiana respectivly, with a comment that comments them in some way. Then it occurred to me that Bilas was hyping up his rival school, sense he went to Duke, and Digger the same, sense he coached at Notre Dame. Could this be them trying to show that they dont want people to think they are bias, so they purposefully just mention how good there rivals are? which is kinda like reverse-racism in a strange and weird way…I just thought it was worth mentioning.

  5. RabidWolf 01/22/2008 at 4:55 PM #

    Not even the Devils are immune to the WalMartization of the fan base.

    Speaking of the media bias, it’s nothing new. The only time I can remember the local and national media outlets being unbiased towards NC State was 1983. Hell, they were the only ACC team playing so it would have been difficult to have a carowhina lean for that particular story. Surprisingly enough, the one media persona who has made a move (small as it may have been) towards more equality in sports reporting has been (shock) Carlton Tudor (shock).

  6. highstick 01/22/2008 at 5:16 PM #

    Keep in mind that the N&O, Charlotte Obs., and The State in Columbia are all owned by McGlatchey now. I haven’t looked to see which other of the major newspapers in the Carolinas that they own, but the tond and quality of these papers is the same. Pretty much lousy reporting. The only difference in Columbia is that they bash South Carolina and suck up to Clempson.

  7. bradleyb123 01/22/2008 at 5:27 PM #

    I think a lot of them do “their part” in tearing down any rival school of Carolina’s. It may sound like a conspiracy theory, but I know if I was a journalist, I would probably get in every subtle jab I could at Carolina. They can easily choose their words to not be “wrong”, to the point where you can’t really justify a complaint. But you know it happens. Kinda like that post where they blogger was talking about an article where they wrote that “State avoided a loss to the heels”. They didn’t HAVE to word it that way. In fact, it is quite awkward wording. IMO, they went out of their way to avoid using wording like “State wins” or “State beats”.

    I should go to the UNC school of journalism and join the force and fight back for my WOLFPACK!!!!

  8. lush 01/22/2008 at 5:36 PM #

    El_Duderino

    r u not into the whole brevity thing?

  9. gcpack 01/22/2008 at 5:44 PM #

    Rabidwolf I must comment on your accolades for that d-bag Tudor(my apologies if I have offended anyone except for Tudor himself).

    Any of you should register with the N&O website to go into their archives to verify my comments.

    Caulton Tudor is one of the biggest Carolina WannaBes that there is. He lives across the street from my church and I would see him mowing grass when church was over. For years he had a baby blue Carolina flag hanging on his doorframe. Not one of those little garden flags but one of the big ones. It disappeared one day after I mentioned that to a friend of mine who worked at the N & O.

    Now for the factual bias as found(or not found as the case may be)in the N & 0 archives. Many of you will remember in the early to mid ’90’s that three UNC wrestlers were charged by the Orange County DA with various sexual offenses such as rape, sexual assault and date rape.
    What was so bad was that in Hillsborough at the Orange Cty Courthouse Carolina fans would stand outside during the trial chanting the UNC wrestling team motto
    “we’re always on top, we’re always on top!”. In wrestling parlance that seems ok but at a trial for rape and sexual assault, well, you can see that the chant can be taken in a different context. In this case is was classless.

    The whole point of this is to say Caulton Tudor was SILENT.
    He wrote nothing about these unfortunate events involving UNC athletes.

    Fast forward 2 to 3 years and three State wrestlers unfortunately got caught up in a situation off campus where a non-student fired into a crowd of people having a street party like they used to do south of main campus for many years. A member of the wrestling team was hit by the gunfire and the other three wrestlers foolishly went into the apartment after the shooter instead of calling police.
    A struggle occurred and the shooter died from his own gun accidentally.

    Caulton Tudor wrote a significant column advocating the TOTAL abolishment of the State wrestling program. He claimed that while it was an accident the problem stemmed from an athletic team that was out of control.

    So Carolina wrestlers get convicted of rape/sexaul assualt, Carolina fans chant at the courthouse and Tudor is silent.

    State wrestlers act foolishly but did not instigate any violence and Tudor says the program should end right there.

    Rabidwolf, Caulton Tudor is a major problem at the N & O for me and should be for all State fans. He went to ECU but has always wanted to be the Carolina fan.

    If nothing else that is evidenced by his stance on the State wrestling team as mentioned earlier much less his personal rah rah Carolina life.

  10. RabidWolf 01/22/2008 at 5:45 PM #

    were they nazis or were they nihilists?

  11. lush 01/22/2008 at 5:52 PM #

    cmon, are you kidding? they threatened castration!

  12. RabidWolf 01/22/2008 at 5:53 PM #

    Tudor has always been a d-bag, but has recently (probably due to the fact that hes arthritic or he misses his old Royal typewriter) toned down his carowhina rhetoric, and has unbelievably written some decent articles actually praising State. He probably had a .357 pointed at his head, or a bad bucket of chicken.

  13. RabidWolf 01/22/2008 at 5:59 PM #

    are we gonna split hairs, here?

  14. RabidWolf 01/22/2008 at 6:09 PM #

    If I may add a comment concerning Stuart Snott…after State’s win over carowhina last February, I made it a moral imperative to intrude on his “chat” on HYPE.com, and asked him for his “professional” opinion on why the Wolfpack was able to handle and even shut down the vaunted tarhole attack……and was propmptly booted out of the room by his moderator for some unknown reason. I guess he didn’t want Stu to cry on his keyboard and be unable to continue typing his drivel.

  15. RabidWolf 01/22/2008 at 6:12 PM #

    “Rabidwolf, Caulton Tudor is a major problem at the N & O for me and should be for all State fans. He went to ECU but has always wanted to be the Carolina fan. ”

    I was not implying that I LIKE or even remotely respect the guy, just that he’s toned himself down just a bit….probably due to his age, or maybe someone put a dead MARMOT in his mailbox.

  16. E-RO 01/22/2008 at 6:28 PM #

    Charlotte Media sucks. The TV sucks, but not quite as much as the paper.

    If I remember correctly, the year we made the sweet 16, it was 4th page news of the sports section. Not small paragraph at the bottom of the first page. Of course UNC got front page, plus 5 articles.

    Big NC State wins have been put to the 4th page in favor of such things as: a UNC 6th man saying he’ll be back next year, UNC beating a cupcake, UNC losing in football, and golf.

  17. beowolf 01/22/2008 at 6:55 PM #

    Some of you guys are going off on irrelevant tangents in your desire to just argue and/or disagree about something.

    No, they’re not. :p

  18. LRM 01/22/2008 at 7:29 PM #

    You don’t have to be a non-fan to have journalistic integrity, I think that’s the point that isn’t getting across.

  19. gcpack 01/22/2008 at 7:32 PM #

    Thats cool Rabidwolf I just don’t think that Tudor or any of those biased writers should get any benefit of the doubt. So I wouldn’t grant them any positive comments as they are prone to avoid anything good to say about State.

  20. RabidWolf 01/22/2008 at 7:47 PM #

    Agreed, gcpack, the local (and national) media outlets have been drinking the dook and tarhole kool-aid, and kissing the respective asses of Dean, K, and Roy for a loooooong time. It is all too often sickening and ALWAYS infuriating. Just because we are NC State we have to put up with rah rah homerism and anti-Wolfpack sentiment. Maybe we could all pool our plethora of talents and resources to create our own sports news and entertainment station. WFTH…I’ll let you all figure out what the call letters mean.

  21. cowdog 01/22/2008 at 7:48 PM #

    Look, who cares what the media says about us. We know what we are made of. We are a collection of ex-players, ex-students, and loyal supporters of Pack ball. We span generations and have experienced the highs and lows of the teams that represented the school we either attendended or just flat out rooted for over our lifetime. Who needs the media to stroke OUR egos?
    Can bias hurt recruiting? Not so much as one might think. Opinion..with no supporting data beyond experience.(when Holtz recruited me…there wasn’t a slum across the road for one)
    From Western NY, I didn’t know squat about Pack football. I only knew State basketball because State beat SC with a stall the same year that St. Bonaventure blew the Pack away in the tourney.
    2 years later, I came here.
    Screw what we hear and read via the delivery system.

  22. Primewolf 01/22/2008 at 7:48 PM #

    SFN, good note, and it doesn’t take much of an analyst to see the blatant bias, usually evident in small doses of words actually used and perspective. Unfortunately, the bias sometimes appears in large doses and lies.

    GCPack, I totally agree with you. To those of you that think winning will solve the bias problem , you are totally crazy. There is absolutely no data to prove that hypothesis. In fact, the data points in the opposite. As GCpack said, the “angry bias” will go out of its way to stomp you out. The evolution goes from underreporting with negative bias to overreporting negative or made-up news.

    The only way to deal with this is to have a top-rate SID that puts out good stuff and has a sense of humor, and also is very smart, personable, and loves NC State. It won’t cure much, but at least we would be fighting it in a smart, honorable way.

    The more success we have, the more digging for problems you will see. It is only natural for that type of bias and perhaps, hatred, to evolve, when a lesser entitiy appears to overtake the establishment.

    You need to fight it with assymetric warfare or some similar concept that makes the price very high for the large, well-funded army of biased reporters.

  23. RabidWolf 01/22/2008 at 7:54 PM #

    cowdog, it isn’t what the media SAYS that sticks in our collective craws (or would it be craw, like deer?), it is the simple fact that their bias toward the OTHER two schools precludes their actual job and responsibility. It is like having a 30 min. show—15 min. for UNX, 14:30 for Dook, and :15 for NCSU (taking advertising into account)..THAT is the point.

  24. cowdog 01/22/2008 at 8:10 PM #

    Rabid, I feel your pain…but it I think we are above the instaspeak. Why should we really give a rat’s ass about Carolina coverage or anyone elses for that matter. Our proofs have always been in the proverbial puddings. And if we only share it amongst ourselves because it is felt that we are the red headed stepchild? All the more satisfying.

  25. RabidWolf 01/22/2008 at 8:17 PM #

    Why does the stepchild always have to be red headed? I’m ginger myself, and always seem to be involved in a conversation that includes a red headed stepchild comment. No offense taken, I’m just wondering.

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