Why Bloggers are the Fourth Estate: “Bob McKenzie is a Patsy” Edition.

As I hydrated myself with G2 and ate pizza over looking Monterey Bay at sunset, begging for a massage and an early bedtime after running my first half marathon in Big Sur this weekend, some Hockey sizzurp went down like Claude Le Mieux in a fight.  

NB:  I must start with a caveat: I don’t drink tea, I can’t stand Sarah Palin, and I don’t usually disparage or even think about the mainstream media and its ineffectualness- except to the extent that I get all my news from Jon Stewart and Puck Daddy. That said, a story broke yesterday that should be covered in every nook and cranny of the sports and hockey worlds.  Yet 24 hours later, only the blogging/twitter world is afire.

Yesterday, Hockey Blogger, Tyler Dellow, who goes by the nom de plume  “MC79Hockey”   unearthed a series of emails written by the NHL’s Vice President of Player Operations, Colin Campbell, that damningly expose an inappropriate personal bias and arguably an indication of corruption within the ranks of the NHL’s Top Brass.

Plenty of smart sports bloggers have analyzed the immediate issues concerning Campbell over the past 24 hours, but what struck me as poignant is the utter bias in mainstream media.

In his even handed and fair exposure and analysis of Campbell’s emails, (which you can read here) Tyler Dellow does what main stream media fails, and has failed for sometime now, to accomplish- whether in a sports related arena, or in coverage of a world event:

Dellow reports facts culled from legal records and court transcripts and analyzes them, identifying factually related matters and most importantly, asking the tough penetrating questions of the parties under fire.

Nothing Dellow has reported can be construed as anything other than truthful reporting of facts as stated by Campbell from court records and probing analysis. The questions which such factual documentation give rise to, and the conclusions which Dellow's reporting leads us to draw, are appropriate and hard pressing. This is real investigative journalism, frankly, at its finest.

The fact that this story spread like lightning across the blogosphere, without much mention of this league shaking controversy, by any mainstream news outlet is telling.  The lack of coverage after this blog broke all over Twitter is endemic of the emasculation of mainstream media.  (more after break)

Not one major outlet is digging in. They are barely even reporting that the blogosphere is in an uproar. They are instead reporting the NHL’s scant press release reaction: “you have to know Colly.” (From the LA Times…).

I'm amazed. Frankly I’d have bet $100 that ESPN would delight in seeing NHL brass take such a blow to  credibility… but nope. No major outlet is pressing on this matter, asking the tough questions or demanding the League properly respond, or perhaps act.

In fact, there is one outlet who has reported a story so pathetically biased, that its a stunning caricature of actual journalism: TSN, The Sports Network.

Bob McKenzie - one of the most respected and trusted hockey journalists out there- has written a piece that clearly indicates that while the media isn’t reporting anything of substance, the story is making the rounds amongst those “in the know”- McKenzie describes a veritable fraternity of league officials, owners, players and the mainstream media they all control repeatedly alluding to the fact that they all are talking amongst themselves, and yet refusing to report or dig into the obvious ethical problems the emails represent. In fact, McKenzie’s coverage of the story smacks of championship level ass kissing, the likes of which we haven’t seen since Game 5 of the 2008 Stanley Cup Finals when – allegedly- a camera actually caught Gary Bettman’s lips firmly affixed to Sidney Crosby’s buttocks right before the start of the third period. 

I give you McKenzie’s Headline:

 “CAMPBELL STILL HAS BACKING OF NHL COMMUNITY”.

Biased headline aside, McKenzie starts out undermining his own credibility by admitting that while no one in the NHL community is publicly addressing “Campbell gate”- everyone is emailing Campbell leaving him with “a filled in-box”.

“The [twitter/blogosphere] cacophony was deafening.
   
Everywhere except within the NHL community.
   
Scant hours after 'Colie-mail' broke, the NHL issued what can only be described as a supreme vote of confidence in Campbell.
   
There was nary a negative word spoken publicly by anyone directly involved in the game. And Campbell's own in-box filled with emails from "hockey people" telling him to hang in there.

McKenzie continues his take, attempting to discredit the blogosphere as a group of rabid out of touch, eunuched fans, whose opinions do not matter. this goes for fans too:

“The truth is there is this incredibly huge, and growing by leaps and bounds every day, disconnect between how hockey fans and media view crime and punishment in the NHL and how the league and those who comprise it -- the 30 owners, the 30 GMs, the 30 head coaches, the 700-plus players who play the game, the NHL head office executives led by commissioner Gary Bettman and, finally, the NHL Players Association -- deal with it.”

Curiously he attempted to lump the media in with the fans, but as quickly as he headed down that shit creek, he remembered he had no paddle, going on to essentially defend Campbell, arguing “Hey its just the system- deal with it”:

“There's a reason why many players don't get suspended or, if they do, they only get a game or two or three -- because that's the way the vast majority of people who comprise the NHL community want it.
   
The owners don't want to be paying players not to play.
   
The general managers don't want a hole in their lineup.
   
The coaches don't want to re-jig the forward lines or defence pairs.”

The "vast majority of people who comprise the NHL community"? How about the people who watch the game on television, pay for tickets and merchandise-the people paying all your salaries, whether directly or indirectly. 

Rather than an indictment of this sordid system, McKenzie tells us “suck it up bitches. You have no say, and too bad.” McKenzie drives the point home with this jem:

It's not about one man, it never has been. It's about The Game, those who run it, those who play it and how they govern it. They do, we (media and fans) don't. That's just the way it is.”

Overlooking that McKenzie's logic is impossibly flawed since Campbell is one of the  powerful people who run “The Game”, 

What a dangerous faulking cop-out. 

Ask Bud Selig how hard it is to win fans back once you betray them, what folly it is to think the fans don't matter. …Baseball almost didn’t recover from its lockout, -in fact, hockey still suffers from Bettman's Waterloo.

The respect for the NHL in the sports world is non-existent, the League can’t get ratings, good television contracts and cannot grow its audience. Why? The  perpetuation of the system McKenzie not only describes, but upholds, lauds, applauds and give credence to. This Boys Club, old white guys from up north, “old tyme hockey” rough and tumble” "faulk ‘em lets just fight" all too real stereotype. 

How many times do we have to lament that Hockey is not even ranked in the top 5 of all professional sports in the world anymore… faulking NASCAR and Soccer are more popular, better respected. NASCAR. Seriously?  

Go ahead Mr. McKenzie, uphold, tout and test your “that’s just the way it is, suck it up bitches” perspective. Let's see how long the alienated fans stick around. And what happens when we don't.

The league and its lapdog, the mainstream media, do the sport of hockey an incredible disservice in failing to report the potential corruption of a League VP.

Worse, their cheerleader from the inky pages, Mr. McKenzie, has taken a position that he purports to be upheld by the  Owners, Teams, Players, Unions and League. A position that alienates, disparages and demeans the fans and those who blog about the sport.

Disregarding the fact that McKenzie article's bias is so blatant that I jadedly wonder if his tie got caught in Campbell’s zipper as ol' Colly was previewing it before publication, I am more disturbed by the obvious circumvention of the issues raised by Dallow, and the truly underhanded effort demean and belittle this blogging journalist who asked the right questions and exposed important facts that need to be addressed.

In other words, and to bring this story around to the face-off circle, the mainstream media, in failing to report the Campbell story in a professional and unbiased manner, is undermines their profession and credibility.

Darrow’s story is an important example of actual investigative journalism and hard hitting reporting, better than anything we see coming out of mainstream media. It might not be Pulitzer Prize winning material about Haiti or Burma, but this story is more important than sport, more important than Hockey. 

Its practically Woodward and Bernstein on Ice and it should be treated with the respect it deserves. 

 Investigative Journalists like Darrow his story are a clear example of the demise of the value of mainstream media, and the rise of the new Fourth Estate: The Blogosphere.

Take heed NHL, if you fail to deal with this Campbell matter openly and honestly, if you continue to hide behind the persona McKenzie has so tragically identified for you, you risk losing the precious few followers you still have. Rest assured the only reason most of us stick around is for the players, the teams themselves and the hope that someone, one day, will soon make changes that bring this league out of the 20^th century. 

Very few people in the real world who follow hockey think the League is anything other than an inbred, secretive, corrupt bastion of a bunch of out of touch “old tymers” who are strangling the most impressive, challenging, beautiful sport to a slow death.and with the campbell story coming down the way it is, they seem to be right.