Accountability sorely lacking in sports journalism

Kyle Nelson Staff Writer

Sports journalism is an increasingly broad field that jumps in leaps and bounds when national scandal is on the horizon. Remember OJ? Mark McGwire? Barbaro? The news has always been objective truth, but what happens when a simple game becomes a scientific survey and any definitive achievement can be dethroned by slander? Today, every move is questioned, every record asterisked. Where once it was simple performance enhancers, today it is testosterone. Where once there was a simple drug test and a yes or no answer, today there is a convoluted and questionable process that leaves just as many questions and answers. Unfortunately, athletes from across the sports spectrum have begun to find out that all it takes is one skeptic to destroy an entire legacy.

On Aug. 18, 2006, ESPN.com ran a story about a famous U.S. track and field star with the headline, “Report: Marion Jones failed drug test in June.” Immediately, major news networks latched onto the story. Talking heads from Anderson Cooper to Bill O’Reilly were lambasting the legacy of the track and field legend. Suddenly every anchor was a scientist and every blogger was an expert on erythropoietin (EPO), the banned substance that showed up in her test. Her peers spoke in her defense and there was a legitimate feeling of disbelief. Let’s not forget that Jones once publicly defended her husband, track star Tim Montgomery, when he tested positive for controlled substances.

For 20 days, Jones was slandered and her reputation questioned. Calls for an asterisk next to her records and times emerged from the media mob, which had better readied themselves for a lynching than in the cases of Barry Bonds, Floyd Landis, and Jose Canseco combined. The dreaded “A” sample had read positive, and its subsequent leak had Jones guilty before final analyses were even conducted. Technically, no press coverage is allowed until both the initial blood test (the “A” sample) and the secondary, corroborating test (the “B” sample) are processed and a final report submitted to the public. The irresponsibility of the news media to acknowledge this inconsistency led to reports as bizarre and unsubstantiated as the legend being stripped of her medals and banned forever from professional running—all
while the “B” sample lay patiently in a UCLA lab awaiting confirmation.

Sept. 6, 2006 marked the first reports of Jones’s innocence. “Marion Jones’s ‘B’ sample negative; sprinter cleared,” read an initial report on ESPN.com. Naturally, one would expect a mass apology from the national media, but below the same story, the Web site ran an opinion piece entitled: “No test can salvage Jones’s tarnished legacy.” Most news agencies covered their tracks in a similar way and avoided apologizing for the blatant slander and false reporting. The plight of Marion Jones brings up a difficult, though increasingly pertinent, subject in the journalism world: accountability.

If the media is allowed to report an incomplete test as the final and irrevocable truth, what will happen next? Journalists have always used their own means to build up and tear down, but in an athlete’s world, a very finite and short career for most, integrity is a thin line on which most walk. Can a reporter with a grudge spread a rumor that athletes have been using steroids and forever mar their otherwise stellar reputations? With no accountability, there is no punishment, and no penalty for inaccurate and irresponsible reporting, and so the answer is “yes.”

In an age where information is more accessible than ever, rumors spread fast, and instead of buying into them and further spreading them, it would seem that the honest and responsible journalist’s intention should be to find the truth. The problem that Marion Jones and countless others have faced is the complete lack of such responsibility. If the public cannot see the necessity to hold the media accountable for the information it presents, there will never be a right or a wrong and, ultimately, the news will start to resemble nothing more than supermarket tabloids.