From Len Berman’s That’s Sports site:
Having worked in the news business, I’ve seen how it works. A big story breaks. It gets covered, and then the media moves on. Haiti doesn’t and shouldn’t work that way.
Word comes that at least 30 members of Haiti’s soccer federation, players, refs, coaches and other officials, perished in the earthquake. The federation’s headquarters collapsed.
Meanwhile, the coach of the South Dakota State basketball team, Scott Nagy, will coach shoe-less this weekend. His adopted daughter is from Haiti and he wants to raise awareness and money. He also wants to collect shoes for Haitian kids in need.
Good for coach Nagy, and for everyone else who refuses to let this news cycle die.
I was just thinking about this today after reading this piece from The New Republic regarding media coverage of the Haiti catastrophe.
Most likely, however, there will come a time soon when the story won’t be “sexy” anymore, to use an admittedly poor word. Just like Swine Flu, or terror alerts at airports (didn’t that one disappear fast?). The news people and camera crews will pack up and go home, but the citizens of Haiti will still be there, hungry, homeless, suffering.
You’ve been hearing a lot about sports organizations that have been donating to the cause. Sometimes I wish they would do so without a press release; one of the highest levels of Maimonides’ eight degrees of charity holds that neither donor nor recipient know each other. But some people are still clueless, as per Korner friend Jeff Pearlman.
With all the hype and money sports get, it may sound trite, but it is only a game.
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{ 2 comments }
Thanks for inserting Len Berman’s appropriate words. I learned in TV class today how death and destruction or sensationalism or what the writer referred to as Sexy reporting gives way to more analytical angles as the media focus changes. I don’t think the newspapers and media bandon topics. I think they are simply doing their job. It is News after all as in New.
The annnounced Clinton Bush Haitian fund and other such organizations carry on the struggle.
Thank you.
Thanks for inserting Len Berman’s appropriate words. I learned in TV class today how death and destruction or sensationalism or what the writer referred to as Sexy reporting gives way to more analytical angles as the media focus changes. I don’t think the newspapers and media bandon topics. I think they are simply doing their job. It is News after all as in New.
The annnounced Clinton Bush Haitian fund and other such organizations carry on the struggle.
Thank you.
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