Sportswriters Are Apologists
By Evan Weiner
February 1, 2011
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/sportswriters-are-apologists
(New York, N. Y.) -- Many years ago the New York Times sports columnist George Vescey told me that sportswriters are apologists. Vescey, whose life interests are not limited to just sports, co-wrote Loretta Lynn's autobiography “Coal Miner's Daughter” in 1974. George Vescey should be handing out annual "Sportswriters Apologist Awards" with Yahoo Sports Dan Wetzel the leading candidate for the 2011 prize.
Wetzel is very upset with National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell who, in Wetzel's mind, has deviated from the Ben Roethlisberger has been rehabilitated script that the apologists, rather the sportswriters, have been following.
Wetzel thinks Goodell's comments to Sports Illustrated’s football writer Peter King are a disservice to the Pittsburgh quarterback and probably to the game of football. After all Wetzel points out that Big Ben has become a model citizen after his unfortunate night in Milledgeville, Georgia last March when he was accused of sexual assault. No charges were filed against the Steelers quarterback but Goodell did sanction Roethlisberger by suspending him for the first six games of the 2010 season.
It was the second time Roethlisberger faced sexual assault allegations and it was the second time that Roethlisnerger was cleared of any wrong doing. Goodell told Roethlisberger if he was a model citizen, he would review the suspension and drop the penalty to four games.
Roethlisberger behaved and Goodell commuted the last two games of the suspension. Since then, the sportswriters have bought into the Big Ben is a changed man story and have spread it as gospel. That is what sportswriters do, apologize, but Goodell has altered the Aesop Fable just a little bit and that disturbs people like Wetzel.
Goodell told King that Steelers teammates didn't exactly have words of support for Roethlsiberger during Goodell's investigation of the incident. Wetzel seems bothered that Goodell is spoiling the Super Bowl party for him and presumably other journalists by telling King what he observed during the Roethlisberger investigation.
Goodell has clearly messed up Wetzel's enjoyment of Super Bowl week and Wetzel has a stinging rebuke for the NFL Commissioner. Goodell is not giving Roethlisbeger a free pass and that could open up the entire question of what happened in both Lake Tahoe and Milledgeville again to other media like non-sports reporters or give a platform to groups who are concerned about athletes committing violent acts against women.
"Most of all, why bring up something that’s negative for the Steelers, Roethlisberger or the NFL?," Wetzel writers in his piece.
"Goodell’s comments carry no positive information or spin. They do nothing for anyone. At best, it’s an annoying line of questioning that the Steelers are capable of compartmentalizing and ignoring. At worst, it’s an unneeded distraction that only regains steam when the rest of the story is printed in SI later in the week."
When did Wetzel become a football coach and start worrying about distractions? He is a journalist and this is a story of some significance. The NFL’s public face talking about the Roethlisberger investigation. King got the story and it is a story. Wetzel is supposed to be a journalist, that’s his job but he sounds like an apologist for Roethlisberger.
People covering the NFL have a cushiony job.
They are spoon fed stories by the team's public relations department. Key players are delivered both in person and on the phone. Team public relations offices spit out information instantaneously. It is an easy job. Covering sports is pretty simple, a writer, radio or TV reporter goes to a practice or a game and chronicles a game. The ESPN program “Around the Horn” is a pretty accurate look at what real sportswriters are all about. It is a toy department of a mega store and nothing of any significance is ever discussed.
Goodell though has ruined the Super Bowl for them by stating his opinion and handing out suspensions.
Wetzel is a journalist, not a fan, or is he a fan? Perhaps Yahoo Sports Executive Editor Dave Morgan can answer that. He hired Wetzel. It does seem sportswriters are fans first and think they are part of a team or a league. After all, the games cannot go on without them. They record history, they vote on awards like the Defensive Player of the Year, the Offensive Player of the Year in the National Football League. They decide who gets into the Canton Hall of Fame. They act like fans who have inside access. Of course that access is rather controlled by spin masters who allow just bits of real information to come out. Wetzel's opening paragraphs seem to have come right out of the Steelers public relations staff as if he was a junior associate in the office writing an apology.
"For months now Ben Roethlisberger and the Pittsburgh Steelers have been working to put the past in the past. They’ve attempted to flip the script on that drunken night in Milledgeville, Ga. and make something good come out of what, at the very best, was a series of poor and classless decisions by their star quarterback," he wrote.
"Roethlisberger has been more open with fans. He’s been more polite with the media. He’s gotten engaged to be married and, it’s been said, has become more of a homebody. His teammates, coaches and the organization as a whole have welcomed him back into the fold. It’s one reason the Steelers are playing Green Bay in Sunday’s Super Bowl."
Who knew that Ben was such a great guy? You kind of wonder what women's groups now think of Ben after Wetzel’s utterances. Unfortunately for Wetzel, Goodell made it clear that Ben was far from a model citizen by sitting him down.
Wetzel doesn’t sound too much different from Hollie who complained about this writer’s “Will Roethlisberger get a pass at the Super Bowl?” column. “It is a shame in today's society that a man accused of rape is guilty until proven innocent, just as a man with children going through a divorce is almost never awarded custody of his children. The woman's word is taken as gospel. Rape is a serious allegation and a woman should not use it as a crutch for a bad decision. A decision that doesn't have the results that she wants. This is cruel to actual victims and takes away from the credibility of women. As was stated, no one knows the true facts. I guess well known males need to have contracts with anyone they have sex with to prevent baseless accusations.”
Angie, like Wetzel, also defended Roethlisberger. “It was said Ben sexual assaulted a woman not raped a woman. This could have been anything from a pat on the butt, touch on the shoulder or a casual wink. Being a woman I know how they use things to their advantage and a lot of men get the bad end. Ben did do as he was asked he did his dues so it does need to be dropped and moved on and see him for what he is an AWESOME quarterback - I love him and his style/behind you all the way Ben Here's to a Super Bowl win and another great season next year and playoff bound GO STEELERS.”
Sports fans and writers are so forgiving as long as a player provides enjoyment and is entertaining.
Is a sportswriter covering a team a real journalist or someone who is lucky to have some ability to put a couple of sentences together and impress some sports editor to hire him or her? The real answer is that most sportswriters just want to be a part of the team and seem to be willing to be used as a public relations department extension.
If a writer real knows something that can give the sport a black eye, chances are he will sit on the information (and it is generally a he in football circles because sports editors assign real men to cover real sports. Just look at the history of women sportswriters and you will see how women were given lesser assignments such as the National Hockey League), it is probably not going to see the light of day.
Members of that esteemed ultimate boys club, the Baseball Writers Association of America, could not figure out in the 1990s that baseball players were adding muscle at incredible rates which might have been the result of illegal substances. Years later, after a Congressional hearing on steroids usage in sports (Congressional committees slammed baseball for the sport's "laissez-faire" drug testing policy but lauded the NFL for the league's drug testing policy---it seems the various committees were again asleep at the wheel during those hearings), the players suspected of use, the Mark McGwires, Rafael Palmeiros of the world have been barred from entering Baseball's Valhalla, the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The eligible voters, sportswriters, the real baseball men according to luminaries like Hall of Fame skipper Whitey Herzog and mere mortals like John McNamara and Gene Mauch, two former baseball managers, have turned their scorn to the players called to testify before a Congressional panel about banned substance in sports.
Sportswriters should not under any circumstances for sports awards or participate in Hall of Fame voting. It is a clear conflict of interest. A reporter is supposed to report. Voting for an honor is not part of the job, especially when the honoree is the subject of the reporting. Cleveland Plain Dealer writer Tony Grassi should not be keeping former Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens owner Art Modell out of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton because Modell moved his team to Baltimore in 1995 and deprived Grassi of a "home" team to cover in 1996, 1997 and 1998. Modell moved his business, it happens but Grassi took it personally and his fellow voters, football writers, fell for Grassi's plea.
That's the real world of sportswriters. They are a band of brothers who love watching games and rubbing elbows with jocks. It is not a difficult job, just report on who won and why and put out information that the team or the league wants. Wetzel is the leading candidate for the Vescey "Sportswriters Apologized Award" for 2011 but there will be others that will be in the running. Wetzel has the lead at the moment.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble 's xplana.com, kobo's literati or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Showing posts with label Ben Roethlisberger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ben Roethlisberger. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Will Ben Roethlisberger get a pass at this Super Bowl?
MONDAY, 24 JANUARY 2011 22:27
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/will-ben-roethlisberger-get-a-pass-at-this-super-bowl
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
The National Football League's Super Bowl matchup between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers probably will draw a lot of people to a television set on February 6, but the game also has a chance to become very political because of the Steelers starting quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. The Steelers quarterback has been involved in two highly publicized "incidents" with women and earned a four game suspension from the NFL for whatever happened.
Of course, very few people know what really happened in both cases. But the fact that Roethlisberger is in the national spotlight should spark some attention from national media about athletes and behavior.
Did Big Ben's win over the Jets complete his rehabilitation and his image or should there be a real discussion about Roethlisberger and others not only in the NFL but all sports who have been in trouble?
Don't expect anything from Rupert Murdoch's FOX syndication or his FOX News Channel on the topic. Don't expect people like Kathy Redmond to all of a sudden be on Face the Nation, Meet the Press or This Week discussing jocks and sexual assault. There is no way the National Football League television partners, Murdoch and FOX, General Electric (soon to be Comcast/GE) and NBC, Disney's ABC or Sumner Redstone's CBS would ever touch that type of story.
Kathy Redmond would be a great guest on FOX's Super Bowl pre-game hype show. Redmond was allegedly raped twice by University of Nebraska star Christian Peter at the university in 1991. The university did nothing to punish Peter at the time. Eventually Congressman Tom Osborne, the former Nebraska coach, apologized to Redmond. She founded The National Coalition Against Violent Athletes in 1998.
Needless to say, Redmond isn't a hero to all, particularly in the jock community.
The National Coalition Against Violent Athletes has no place at the Super Bowl table. It is too dangerous to the image of the NFL. Kathy Redmond and her group should be heard however during the Super Bowl lead up, especially with Roethlisberger being so prominent in the game.
Instead there will be the nonsense about how Big Ben has been a good citizen, kept quiet and served his four game suspension. Roethlisberger will be rehabilitated by the media and will just become a loveable, maybe slightly misunderstood fellow. As long as Lawrence Taylor could terrorize offenses during this time with the New York Giants, a lot of stuff off the field was overlooked and during the LT days with the Giants there were some allegations that some people were given money to look the other way at LT's discretions although nothing was ever substantiated. LT was probably just misunderstood as well.
The news will pivot to the last small town NFL team playing another grand old NFL team and the coverage will get silly.
The Super Bowl is serious business however. It was a catalyst behind a holiday in Arizona and changed broadcast rules in the United States. It is like Christmas, the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving rolled into one.
The Super Bowl is after all, America's Holiday. It is the Christmas sales season for fast food pizza, supermarket markets which have Super Bowl sales on snacks, it is a big day for beer sales and there are the commercials which are seemingly more important than the game.
The truth is this. The Super Bowl has an economic impact on virtually every city, town, village and hamlet in New Jersey and the United States because people are throwing parties and buying big screen TVs and food. The Super Bowl has been in the past an agent for change both in Arizona and in the world of television and radio in the United States.
The National Football League pulled a Super Bowl from Arizona and put the political weight of the entity known as the NFL into a lobbying position in the state capital in Phoenix. Arizona "celebrates" Martin Luther King Day as the result of direct intervention by the National Football League in terms of dangling a Super Bowl in front of voters. In 1987, newly elected Arizona Governor Evan Mecham's first act in his new job was to erase Martin Luther King Day from the Arizona calendar as an official state holiday. That decision set off a boycott of the state with entertainers like Stevie Wonder refusing to perform in any venue in Arizona.
Governor Mecham's reasoning was simple. The Arizona legislature in 1986 and Governor Bruce Babbitt, in Mecham's opinion, created the holiday illegally.
The National Football League, in an attempt to help the Phoenix Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill to sell more seats after he misread the Phoenix-area market following the move of his Cardinals from St. Louis to Tempe in 1988, awarded Tempe the January 31, 1993 Super Bowl. But Mecham's decision created a number of problems for the league, specifically the National Football League Players Association was not too keen on playing the NFL's showcase game in a state where a governor took away the holiday and the action was supported by Senator John McCain.
In 1989, the Arizona state legislature approved a law making Martin Luther King Day a state holiday but voters needed to approve the measure. In 1990, Arizonans went to the polls and rejected the making Martin Luther King Day a state holiday. Shortly after the voters said no, the NFL said no to Arizona and pulled the January 31, 1993 game from Tempe.
The National Football League after pulling the 1993 game went back to Arizona and laid the cards out on the table telling voters if they approved the holiday in a November 1992 vote, the NFL would award the next available Super Bowl to Tempe. Arizona voters approved the 1992 ballot initiative and five months later the NFL lived up to their part of the bargain and granted Tempe the January 28, 1996 game.
Given the events of the past year in Arizona, it would seem that the National Football League will make another statement with silence. The Super Bowl probably is not returning to Glendale, Arizona any time in the new future and will give the game to "quieter" areas.
Meanwhile, the 2004 Super Bowl changed TV. Janet Jackson has left more of an impression on American society than her brother, the late Michael Jackson, because without Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during Super Bowl XXXVIII in Houston, Texas back on February 1, 2004, American's would be getting "live" over-the-air radio and TV, warts and all, since over-the-air radio and TV station owners would not have to worry about being fined for indecent programming whether it is a visual or something said.
American politicians and political appointees or at least those politicians who were pandering for a certain block of voters became prudes and put more teeth into public airwaves indecency laws because of Janet Jackson. Those politicians wanted to protect viewers and listeners who tune into over-the-air radio or TV shows and might be offended by language or nudity. Cable TV, broadband and satellite radio do not have the same restrictions for whatever reason.
That performance changed how America's receive over-the-air TV and radio offerings and gave American conservatives a new rallying point and eventually would introduce a new censorship or morality through the threat of hefty fines against media companies who might be found in violation of "indecency."
Of course "indecency" is in the eye of the beholder and for some members of Congress, it took about 15 hours for them to start screaming about Janet Jackson's exposed breast on the steps of the Capitol in Washington.
Viacom's CBS television network had the rights to the game which featured New England and Carolina. As part of the game presentation, Viacom had MTV produce the halftime show which featured Jackson and Justin Timberlake. During a song and dance routine, Timberlake exposed Jackson's breast for less than a second but that was enough time to get the "purity and vice" machine of the Republican Party going on morality. The usual suspects got on that bandwagon led by The Parents Television Council, Brett Bozell and Phyllis Schlafly. Congress got on that train as well as Michigan Republican Fred Upton proposed legislation that would raise fines for violating indecency rules from the 2004 level of $27,500 to $275,000. Zell Miller, the Democrat who was the United States Senator from Georgia, thought the incident was part of the "decaying morality of America" and Federal Communications Chairman Michael Powell wanted an immediate investigation into the Super Bowl half time show.
This was red meat for certain politicians and their followers but for the most part it was a tame incident that was not really seen but most people until they were alerted to the fact that there was an "wardrobe malfunction" and that is when most people saw the incident on TIVO in slow motion. What has been forgotten about the Super Bowl show were the actions of the other acts including a performance by Nelly in which he pointed to his crotch and Kid Rock's poncho which looked like a cut up American flag.
Even more interesting, Janet Jackson was fingered as the culprit and got the brunt of the criticism with Timberlake pretty much emerging unscathed.
The NFL put out an apology almost immediately for the halftime show and fired MTV on the spot although the league had no problem accepting Viacom's money for the right to show the Super Bowl.
The Super Bowl gave conservative Republicans running for office in 2004 a platform and they ran with it. Janet Jackson was soon replaced on the indecency list by Howard Stern and eventually the whole thing morphed into a debate about gay rights (the Dick Chaney-John Edwards Vice President debate) which was a perfect plank for the Republicans in a Presidential election. An issue with little substance or importance, perfect for the American TV and radio punditry culture.
Eventually, Viacom was fined $550,000 for broadcasting the Jackson "wardrobe malfunctioning" incident. CBS continues to appeal the fine.
After the Super Bowl incident, Michael Powell and the FCC dug in and started to go after other areas.
By October 2004, Commissioner Powell and his FCC colleagues started thinking whether or not a hockey game that feature fights was suitable programming between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. daily.
The Federal Communications Commission did a study at the behest of Congress on over-the-air, cable and satellite television violence and how that type of programming impacts children.
The FCC already had rules banning so-called indecent programming on radio and TV between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. daily. The FCC indecency guidelines have been in effect since 2001 but most people were unaware of the rules until Janet Jackson's bare breast was exposed after a "wardrobe malfunction."
The FCC was very serious in 2004 about what was seen on TV, after all it was an election year but the study was crucial business not only to those looking for an election issue aside from the Iraq War and the FCC could give politicians some cover for other "important" issues.
Yes, hockey fighting might very well be considered violent programming. This is a major problem for not only the National Hockey League, but also the National Football League which has sold violence for decades going back to the CBS production of the Violent World of Sam Huff, narrated by Walter Cronkite, in 1960.
One of sports major selling points is violence. When the Nashville Predators began marketing its product to Tennessee in 1998, the marketing department showed hockey collisions and NASCAR accidents in sales presentations.
Sports TV highlight shows feature collisions, fighting and general rowdy behavior. Sports video games routinely feature fighting and blood.
The National Hockey League did fight back in 2004. NHL attorney Phillip Hochberg wrote a letter to the FCC saying that "the NHL feels that it is improper to even consider whether a sport like hockey would fall into any definition of televised `violence."
Should both the Congress and the FCC get involved and regulate fighting in hockey, violence in football, boxing matches, and high and tight pitches in baseball? Of course not.
The morality fight continued after the Janet Jackson Super Bowl. ABC-TV scheduled the movie Saving Private Ryan for Veteran's Day 2004 but 65 of the network's affiliates would not show it because of language concerns in the movie. Howard Stern was fired by Clear Channel stations (whose Texas owners had heavy ties to the Bush White House although to be fair Clear Channel became a major factor in the broadcasting industry because of the 1996 Telecommunications Act signed by President Clinton). There were incidents surrounding the 2009 Super Bowl.
The Super Bowl is much more than just a championship football game.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
MONDAY, 24 JANUARY 2011 22:27
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/will-ben-roethlisberger-get-a-pass-at-this-super-bowl
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
The National Football League's Super Bowl matchup between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers probably will draw a lot of people to a television set on February 6, but the game also has a chance to become very political because of the Steelers starting quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. The Steelers quarterback has been involved in two highly publicized "incidents" with women and earned a four game suspension from the NFL for whatever happened.
Of course, very few people know what really happened in both cases. But the fact that Roethlisberger is in the national spotlight should spark some attention from national media about athletes and behavior.
Did Big Ben's win over the Jets complete his rehabilitation and his image or should there be a real discussion about Roethlisberger and others not only in the NFL but all sports who have been in trouble?
Don't expect anything from Rupert Murdoch's FOX syndication or his FOX News Channel on the topic. Don't expect people like Kathy Redmond to all of a sudden be on Face the Nation, Meet the Press or This Week discussing jocks and sexual assault. There is no way the National Football League television partners, Murdoch and FOX, General Electric (soon to be Comcast/GE) and NBC, Disney's ABC or Sumner Redstone's CBS would ever touch that type of story.
Kathy Redmond would be a great guest on FOX's Super Bowl pre-game hype show. Redmond was allegedly raped twice by University of Nebraska star Christian Peter at the university in 1991. The university did nothing to punish Peter at the time. Eventually Congressman Tom Osborne, the former Nebraska coach, apologized to Redmond. She founded The National Coalition Against Violent Athletes in 1998.
Needless to say, Redmond isn't a hero to all, particularly in the jock community.
The National Coalition Against Violent Athletes has no place at the Super Bowl table. It is too dangerous to the image of the NFL. Kathy Redmond and her group should be heard however during the Super Bowl lead up, especially with Roethlisberger being so prominent in the game.
Instead there will be the nonsense about how Big Ben has been a good citizen, kept quiet and served his four game suspension. Roethlisberger will be rehabilitated by the media and will just become a loveable, maybe slightly misunderstood fellow. As long as Lawrence Taylor could terrorize offenses during this time with the New York Giants, a lot of stuff off the field was overlooked and during the LT days with the Giants there were some allegations that some people were given money to look the other way at LT's discretions although nothing was ever substantiated. LT was probably just misunderstood as well.
The news will pivot to the last small town NFL team playing another grand old NFL team and the coverage will get silly.
The Super Bowl is serious business however. It was a catalyst behind a holiday in Arizona and changed broadcast rules in the United States. It is like Christmas, the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving rolled into one.
The Super Bowl is after all, America's Holiday. It is the Christmas sales season for fast food pizza, supermarket markets which have Super Bowl sales on snacks, it is a big day for beer sales and there are the commercials which are seemingly more important than the game.
The truth is this. The Super Bowl has an economic impact on virtually every city, town, village and hamlet in New Jersey and the United States because people are throwing parties and buying big screen TVs and food. The Super Bowl has been in the past an agent for change both in Arizona and in the world of television and radio in the United States.
The National Football League pulled a Super Bowl from Arizona and put the political weight of the entity known as the NFL into a lobbying position in the state capital in Phoenix. Arizona "celebrates" Martin Luther King Day as the result of direct intervention by the National Football League in terms of dangling a Super Bowl in front of voters. In 1987, newly elected Arizona Governor Evan Mecham's first act in his new job was to erase Martin Luther King Day from the Arizona calendar as an official state holiday. That decision set off a boycott of the state with entertainers like Stevie Wonder refusing to perform in any venue in Arizona.
Governor Mecham's reasoning was simple. The Arizona legislature in 1986 and Governor Bruce Babbitt, in Mecham's opinion, created the holiday illegally.
The National Football League, in an attempt to help the Phoenix Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill to sell more seats after he misread the Phoenix-area market following the move of his Cardinals from St. Louis to Tempe in 1988, awarded Tempe the January 31, 1993 Super Bowl. But Mecham's decision created a number of problems for the league, specifically the National Football League Players Association was not too keen on playing the NFL's showcase game in a state where a governor took away the holiday and the action was supported by Senator John McCain.
In 1989, the Arizona state legislature approved a law making Martin Luther King Day a state holiday but voters needed to approve the measure. In 1990, Arizonans went to the polls and rejected the making Martin Luther King Day a state holiday. Shortly after the voters said no, the NFL said no to Arizona and pulled the January 31, 1993 game from Tempe.
The National Football League after pulling the 1993 game went back to Arizona and laid the cards out on the table telling voters if they approved the holiday in a November 1992 vote, the NFL would award the next available Super Bowl to Tempe. Arizona voters approved the 1992 ballot initiative and five months later the NFL lived up to their part of the bargain and granted Tempe the January 28, 1996 game.
Given the events of the past year in Arizona, it would seem that the National Football League will make another statement with silence. The Super Bowl probably is not returning to Glendale, Arizona any time in the new future and will give the game to "quieter" areas.
Meanwhile, the 2004 Super Bowl changed TV. Janet Jackson has left more of an impression on American society than her brother, the late Michael Jackson, because without Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during Super Bowl XXXVIII in Houston, Texas back on February 1, 2004, American's would be getting "live" over-the-air radio and TV, warts and all, since over-the-air radio and TV station owners would not have to worry about being fined for indecent programming whether it is a visual or something said.
American politicians and political appointees or at least those politicians who were pandering for a certain block of voters became prudes and put more teeth into public airwaves indecency laws because of Janet Jackson. Those politicians wanted to protect viewers and listeners who tune into over-the-air radio or TV shows and might be offended by language or nudity. Cable TV, broadband and satellite radio do not have the same restrictions for whatever reason.
That performance changed how America's receive over-the-air TV and radio offerings and gave American conservatives a new rallying point and eventually would introduce a new censorship or morality through the threat of hefty fines against media companies who might be found in violation of "indecency."
Of course "indecency" is in the eye of the beholder and for some members of Congress, it took about 15 hours for them to start screaming about Janet Jackson's exposed breast on the steps of the Capitol in Washington.
Viacom's CBS television network had the rights to the game which featured New England and Carolina. As part of the game presentation, Viacom had MTV produce the halftime show which featured Jackson and Justin Timberlake. During a song and dance routine, Timberlake exposed Jackson's breast for less than a second but that was enough time to get the "purity and vice" machine of the Republican Party going on morality. The usual suspects got on that bandwagon led by The Parents Television Council, Brett Bozell and Phyllis Schlafly. Congress got on that train as well as Michigan Republican Fred Upton proposed legislation that would raise fines for violating indecency rules from the 2004 level of $27,500 to $275,000. Zell Miller, the Democrat who was the United States Senator from Georgia, thought the incident was part of the "decaying morality of America" and Federal Communications Chairman Michael Powell wanted an immediate investigation into the Super Bowl half time show.
This was red meat for certain politicians and their followers but for the most part it was a tame incident that was not really seen but most people until they were alerted to the fact that there was an "wardrobe malfunction" and that is when most people saw the incident on TIVO in slow motion. What has been forgotten about the Super Bowl show were the actions of the other acts including a performance by Nelly in which he pointed to his crotch and Kid Rock's poncho which looked like a cut up American flag.
Even more interesting, Janet Jackson was fingered as the culprit and got the brunt of the criticism with Timberlake pretty much emerging unscathed.
The NFL put out an apology almost immediately for the halftime show and fired MTV on the spot although the league had no problem accepting Viacom's money for the right to show the Super Bowl.
The Super Bowl gave conservative Republicans running for office in 2004 a platform and they ran with it. Janet Jackson was soon replaced on the indecency list by Howard Stern and eventually the whole thing morphed into a debate about gay rights (the Dick Chaney-John Edwards Vice President debate) which was a perfect plank for the Republicans in a Presidential election. An issue with little substance or importance, perfect for the American TV and radio punditry culture.
Eventually, Viacom was fined $550,000 for broadcasting the Jackson "wardrobe malfunctioning" incident. CBS continues to appeal the fine.
After the Super Bowl incident, Michael Powell and the FCC dug in and started to go after other areas.
By October 2004, Commissioner Powell and his FCC colleagues started thinking whether or not a hockey game that feature fights was suitable programming between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. daily.
The Federal Communications Commission did a study at the behest of Congress on over-the-air, cable and satellite television violence and how that type of programming impacts children.
The FCC already had rules banning so-called indecent programming on radio and TV between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. daily. The FCC indecency guidelines have been in effect since 2001 but most people were unaware of the rules until Janet Jackson's bare breast was exposed after a "wardrobe malfunction."
The FCC was very serious in 2004 about what was seen on TV, after all it was an election year but the study was crucial business not only to those looking for an election issue aside from the Iraq War and the FCC could give politicians some cover for other "important" issues.
Yes, hockey fighting might very well be considered violent programming. This is a major problem for not only the National Hockey League, but also the National Football League which has sold violence for decades going back to the CBS production of the Violent World of Sam Huff, narrated by Walter Cronkite, in 1960.
One of sports major selling points is violence. When the Nashville Predators began marketing its product to Tennessee in 1998, the marketing department showed hockey collisions and NASCAR accidents in sales presentations.
Sports TV highlight shows feature collisions, fighting and general rowdy behavior. Sports video games routinely feature fighting and blood.
The National Hockey League did fight back in 2004. NHL attorney Phillip Hochberg wrote a letter to the FCC saying that "the NHL feels that it is improper to even consider whether a sport like hockey would fall into any definition of televised `violence."
Should both the Congress and the FCC get involved and regulate fighting in hockey, violence in football, boxing matches, and high and tight pitches in baseball? Of course not.
The morality fight continued after the Janet Jackson Super Bowl. ABC-TV scheduled the movie Saving Private Ryan for Veteran's Day 2004 but 65 of the network's affiliates would not show it because of language concerns in the movie. Howard Stern was fired by Clear Channel stations (whose Texas owners had heavy ties to the Bush White House although to be fair Clear Channel became a major factor in the broadcasting industry because of the 1996 Telecommunications Act signed by President Clinton). There were incidents surrounding the 2009 Super Bowl.
The Super Bowl is much more than just a championship football game.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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