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« "Man, you change phone numbers more than I change underwear." | Main | Coore And Crenshaw On Restoring Pinehurst #2 »
Friday
Mar052010

"So why did so much of the mainstream media so assiduously follow the tabloid lead on the Tiger Woods story?"

That's the question raised by Paul Farhi for the American Journalism Review.

Perhaps because of the way another recent sex scandal played out. In 2007, the National Enquirer reported that former Sen. John Edwards had had an affair with a videographer who worked on his presidential campaign, Rielle Hunter, and had fathered her baby. Edwards repeatedly denied the allegation, dismissing the story as "tabloid trash."

And...

What changed between the Edwards and Woods stories? NPR's Shepard suggests the first scandal incited the firestorm over the second: "The John Edwards story forced legitimate news organizations not to ignore Tiger Woods. The mainstream media used to dismiss that kind of story. Now they do so at their own peril. The floodgates are open. Anything goes."

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Reader Comments (8)

These are the three paragraphs from the article that jumped out for me:

There's no question that the news media got the direction of the Tiger Woods story right; Woods himself confirmed its hazy outlines a few days after the National Enquirer broke the story of his relationship with a New York event planner, Rachel Uchitel. In two brief and vaguely worded postings on his Web site, he acknowledged unspecified "transgressions" and "infidelity," thereby shattering his carefully crafted image as an upstanding family man. As some of his sponsors headed for cover, Woods took an indefinite hiatus from golf to sort out his personal life.

That, at least, is what is known for certain. But almost every other widely reported aspect of Tiger's tale rests on a wobbly foundation, unsupported by on-the-record sourcing, official documentation or direct observation--that is, the methods that journalists are supposed to employ to separate fact from speculation and substance from gossip. Much of what was reported relied instead on supposition, guesswork and innuendo, often sourced back to problematic stories like the News of the World's Lawton story or online reports of dubious provenance.

For all its lurid aspects, the Woods scandal may have constituted a watershed in American journalism: A major news story in which many "respectable" news outlets ditched traditional newsgathering methods and standards of fair play and piggybacked on aggressive but not always accurate tabloid reporting. The distinction between "mainstream" and "tabloid" may never have been so blurred as it was in the whirlwind of reporting on Woods.
03.5.2010 | Unregistered CommenterTom Ierubino
Nice source article, Geoff. This article nails down the current state of the Mainstream Media. Overblown non-stories based on celebrities drive the national networks, promoting the very culture that owns them. I stopped watching many years ago, but I'll sit back and read what the journalism scholars find in the Woods story.
03.6.2010 | Unregistered CommenterCaperman
The general notion that the media are enamored of non-stories is surely correct. And along with Caperman, I stopped watching TV News long ago, all the way back in 1992 during the Clinton-Bush41 campaign in my case. Newspapers are moribund, too. Alas. But what did TMZ, Radar, and the National Enquirer get wrong about Tiger's self-immolation? I had never even heard of the first two before Thanksgiving night, but in the main they all seemed to get there first and get it right for the most part. That it was all quite lurid wasn't their fault. Maybe their glee was unseemly and the schadenfreude of so many may have been "mean" but what goes around comes around...something Tiger didn't expect. But to say that this was a "personal" non-story between Tiger and those immediately involved is incorrect. The bazillion dollar Tiger Brand made it a public matter. Just ask all of his erstwhile sponsors, except for TAG Heuer and Nike.
I am not a newsman . . . But - what the hell . . . Edwards denied - for a very long time - the truth of the accusations against him - so the mass media was rightfully cautious in running with it. . . Woods - almost immediately - verified the truth of the charges against him. . . So the media got all over it - since he is fairly well known . . . Am I missing something here?
03.6.2010 | Unregistered CommenterWisconsin Reader
Well said, Wisconsin Reader.
03.6.2010 | Unregistered Commenterjayjay
"So the media got all over it - since he is fairly well known." Pretty much. And they are still after John Edwards (not to mention that "shrew" Elizabeth), for something that just may have Tiger's lawyers' attention, depending on how the party-planner's trip to the Australian Masters was paid for.
There are some telling comparisons but let's get real: Tiger is a golfer and John Edwards was running to be elected President. To me that's apples and oranges. Edwards still comes off as a craven scumbag who can't go much lower on the esteem ladder. Tiger acted badly as a husband but he seems to be more honest in the aftermath. As for the coverage I think the news media blew the Edwards story but got tiger's just right. It's more of a tmz tale at the end of the day.
03.6.2010 | Unregistered CommenterTlavin
Tlavin, How will golf writers react to TMZsports.com reporting on the private lives of other Tour players? Will they feel compelled to compete? Virtually all Tour players have sponsors. One can reasonably infer that they lead "moral" lives or they would not have had sponsors. How many acts of adultery will it take to lose a sponsor?
03.8.2010 | Unregistered CommenterGates

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