COVERING NEW YORK SPORTS

By: Allan Wolper Wolper's Ethics Corner Considers Press-Box Bigotry


Mike Freeman, an African-American sports columnist for The New York
Times, believes the Big Apple is infested with jealous, sexist, bigoted
sportswriters with barely a whisper of talent.

"Sports is the least policed beat in journalism," Freeman said. "We cover up all
our problems. We are such hypocrites. We love attacking other people. But we
need to fix our own houses. It's a disgrace."

Freeman is convinced white writers see their black colleagues as apologists for
black athletes, and he alleges that women are sexually harassed in the press box
and often accused of seeking liaisons with the male players they cover.

The big, ugly picture Freeman paints reeks of some truth. Women have a hard time
in the male-dominated world of sports, and there aren't nearly enough minorities
in sports departments.

Freeman's rage is not new. He took on the New York sports world Oct. 30 on
Sportspages.com, where he accused some white journalists of ridiculing his
stories for racial reasons and because they were lazy.

But Freeman also has some things to answer for.

In his Internet assault on his colleagues, he relied on anonymous sources, his
targets were not given a chance to reply, and he refused to admit to mistakes
when there was proof he might have wronged someone.

Freeman's Sportspages.com critique has staying power. Some white writers worry
their careers might suffer because they were identified as mean-spirited by a
star black columnist of The New York Times. Not to mention what their
readers might think.

That was why Steve Ruinsky, sports editor of Melville, N.Y.-based
Newsday, and Leon Carter, sports editor of the New York Daily News
and chair emeritus of the National Association of Black Journalists sports task
force, called and wrote Times Sports Editor Neil Amdur to complain. Amdur
argues that the Times should not be connected to Freeman's Web piece. But
Freeman was tagged as a Times writer on the site.

Freeman also accused Newsday writer Bob Glauber of making a sexist remark
that upset an anonymous woman who turned out to be Judy Battista, a Times
writer. "I heard Glauber tell Judy she dressed like a flight attendant," said
Freeman.

Battista tells a different story.

"That's not what Bob Glauber said," Battista insisted. "I was wearing a big
scarf, and he said, kiddingly, that it looked like an airplane blanket. He's a
good friend. He can say what he wants."

Even though Freeman's Web article has been the talk of the New York
sportswriting community, none of the papers whose writers were involved have
published any stories about it.

The controversy became public because of a quote Freeman attributed to New York
Jets Coach Al Groh in an Oct. 25 Times column published after a
nationally televised Monday night football game. Freeman reported that Groh told
his team during a halftime harangue "that the nation was watching a bunch of
pathetic losers" as a way to motivate them to a miracle win against the Miami
Dolphins. After his column ran, Freeman claimed five white Jets beat writers
- Mark Cannizzaro of the New York Post, Rich Cimini of the Daily
News, Randy Lange of The Record in Hackensack, N.J., Barry Wilner of
The Associated Press, and Glauber of Newsday - conspired to get Groh
to deny, at a press conference, the "pathetic losers" line.

But there was no question Groh would deny it because he insists he didn't say
it.

Afterward, AP's Wilner celebrated noisily, according to Freeman, who said senior
AP sportswriter Dave Goldberg later telephoned the Times columnist to
apologize for the behavior of his colleague. Why? Freeman said Goldberg was
reacting to a racially inspired episode. The white writers say Freeman is wrong,
and Goldberg says AP won't let him talk about it.

There are other issues. Freeman identified Cannizzaro as part of the conspiracy
to knock down his Times story even though the Post writer wasn't
at Groh's news conference.

The Daily News' Carter said his reporter, Cimini, and the other white
journalists were not ganging up on Freeman when they asked Groh about the
disputed "pathetic losers" quote.

"Mike Freeman is a very good reporter," Carter said. "He raised some legitimate
questions about racism in his Internet article. That 'pathetic losers' quote was
a nugget. The pack did not get it. They had to ask Groh about it."

After four months of silence, Groh, now football coach at the University of
Virginia, telephoned to set the record straight. He said he did not call his
team "pathetic losers." But he conceded one of the players might have mistakenly
said he did.

"A lot of things get said in the emotions of a locker room that maybe somebody
did not get right," Groh explained. "I am not speaking to that fact. I am here
to say I never said that."



Allan Wolper's "Ethics Corner" column appears monthly in E&P. He can
be reached at alfyjournal@msn.com.



Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.