When Bob Woodward exposed Watergate, he used a brand of
journalistic ethics that ultimately impeached President Nixon. For Woodward,
the task was clear: pursue the truth and damn the consequences. Journalists, whether
they are reporters, newsroom announcers or just plain old “fans with
typewriters”, i.e. bloggers, have a responsibility to the people to whom they
are disseminating information, as well as to themselves. In the field in which I work, attorneys have a
responsibility to ensure that they do not provide information to the Court that
they know to be false, i.e. suborning perjury. I believe that journalists, like attorneys, have a responsibility to ensure that the information that they disseminate is
fair and honest, and that it is the truth.
Two instances within tennis have raised serious questions
about the integrity of those who cover the sport. The first is Ben Rothenberg
of the New York Times’ piece on the serial plagiarism of Neil Harman of the
Times UK. Rothenberg undertook an investigation into allegations of plagiarism in
the Wimbledon Yearbook, published annually by the All England Club. Mr.
Rothenberg identified 52 instances of plagiarism by Mr. Harman in several
issues of the Wimbledon Yearbook. As a
result of the allegations Mr. Harman resigned as a member of the International
Tennis Writers’ Association (“ITWA”) and at the time of this writing, deleted
his Twitter account and has been suspended from the Times.
As someone who has worked in the legal fraternity for close
to 30 years, I wondered about the following upon reading Mr. Rothenberg’s piece:
1.
When did the journalists who were plagiarized
realize that their work had been stolen?
2.
When did the plagiarized journalists make Mr.
Harman aware of his plagiarism?
3.
What was Mr. Harman’s response to his colleagues
whom he had plagiarized?
I ask these questions because from what I read in Mr.
Rothenberg’s piece, the plagiarizing by Mr. Harman had been going on for a
considerable amount of time. Why did
none of the journalists, who are charged with truth telling as part of their
professional responsibility, bring their story to the public’s attention? Why
did the issue come to the forefront of tennis this summer? Did the journalists whose work were stolen
have no obligation to reveal to the All England Lawn Tennis Club (“AELTC”) that
they were publishing plagiarized work? If they did inform the AELTC, when did
they do so and what was the AELTC’s response to learning that they were
profiting from stolen work? As a matter of fact, was the ITWA informed of this situation, and if so, what action, if any did the ITWA take in order to resolve this issue?
The second instance is an article published on Tennis.com by
Joel Drucker about Serena Williams. Recently, Serena suffered what can only be
considered a mind boggling incident at Wimbledon which led to both she and her
sister Venus Williams having to withdraw from the Championships due to illness. Drucker,
using innuendo, unnamed sources, scathing diatribe and all out disgust, fanned
the flames of hatred and suspicion against Serena regarding the reasons for her
strange behavior. He even went so far as
to call her a “press conference bully”. I
don’t know what a press conference bully is but I would be glad if someone
could explain it to me. I found his article and many like it since Wimbledon to be disrespectful, libelous, and irresponsible.
For years the tennis media have cast the Williams family as
villains. They continue to construct a narrative that suggests the family is
unwelcomed and not worthy of respect. Who can forget Serena’s dancing on the
lawns of Wimbledon when she achieved her dream of winning an Olympic gold medal
in singles? Every journalist worth their salt spent more time calling her
celebratory dance an ode to gangsterism than writing of her triumph.
if you are a journalist and you are suspicious of Serena’s
injuries, then you have a duty and a responsibility to investigate and bring
facts to bear on the issue. If it means
getting into her inner circle to find the reason(s) for her withdrawal(s) from
a tournament other than what’s stated in her press releases, then do so. Just as
Mr. Rothenberg investigated and laid out the case for Mr. Harman’s plagiarizing,
so too should Mr. Drucker and others like him. Why sit behind your keyboards
and hint that Ms. Williams’ injuries are not legitimate? It does Ms. Williams
and her career a disservice to make unfounded and unsubstantiated insinuations
about her illness and injuries.
I read recently an article by Garry Doyle of the Irish Post about
Paul Kimmage. Paul Kimmage was a former
cyclist who rode in the Tour de France.
He was also the writer responsible for the take down of Lance Armstrong
and the systemic doping that was occurring in cycling. Kimmage believed there was systematic doping
in cycling and risked his career and his reputation to expose it. For his troubles, he was ostracized from the
sport that he loved by many of his colleagues. It is only now that he is being
welcomed back into the cycling fold.
Kimmage speaks disparagingly about tennis as he believes
that there is doping in the sport. I
wondered if there was any enterprising journalists willing to follow in his
footsteps and reveal tennis doping as he did in cycling. Then I read Joel
Drucker’s piece over at Tennis.com and I considered how long Harman was allowed
to plagiarize and thought no. It seems to me that tennis reporters have a code
amongst themselves about what they deem appropriate to share with the public. The
code that exists amongst tennis journalists does not appear as strongly in
other sport. In many other sports in
which I take an interest, there have been many instances of journalists
exploring rumors in order to debunk or validate their claims. Look at baseball
and Alex Rodriquez, the US$250M man for the New York Yankees who has been suspended
from the MLB. In the NFL, there have
many instances of players being suspended or even losing their jobs as a result
of journalists conducting investigations.
Tennis on the other hand tries its hardest to show by the
collective silence of those who cover the sport that everything is hunky dory
until it is not. I sympathise with those writers whose hard
work was stolen by Mr. Harman. However,
my sympathy can only go so far as it is only when faced with its own internal
crises that journalists even lifted a finger to tell us that they gave a damn.
1 comment:
I have all the questions you have, Karen, and the only answer I can come up with is that--with the advent of the Internet--the entire concept of plagiarism or any type of creative content theft--has been turned on its head.
I've had webmasters act shocked when I've asked them to take down material of mine that was copied in its entirety, word for word. Some have engaged in name-calling, and one group tried to stalk me. Because I said that my stuff was stolen. "Everything belongs to everyone" is now the norm, though I suspect that if were to go to the respective houses of these believers and take their stereo equipment, they would be quick to call the police.
As for Serena, you know how I feel. Attacking the Williams sisters seems to be a permanent item on the sports "journalism" to-do list.
To be fair, it isn't just sports journalists who have decided that operating without standards is the way to go. Funny, there was a story on NPR this afternoon--I just caught the end of it--on how reporting stories has largely become distorting stories.
I've come to believe that many (most?) people have no interest whatsoever in facts and rational analysis. God forbid those pesky facts get in the way.
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