Final time I checked, Stephen A. Smith, a person who epitomizes the “embrace really loud debate” and who, simply this week, had a man sniffing a female colleague’s shoe on his present, has determined to talk for journalism.
I’ll be frank — I’ve by no means been an enormous Stephen A. fan. It goes again, I believe, to his ignorant and misogynistic comments about ladies needing to take accountability for their very own abuse in 2014. Since then, he’s given me plenty of sexist fodder to work with, and whereas I don’t begrudge him his success, his present — the place Smith shouts down anybody who dares problem him with a stage of indignation often reserved for medieval monarchs — isn’t actually my factor.
Smith has been very open about desirous to be the highest-paid host on the Worldwide Chief, and also you don’t get there by criticizing the opposite expertise — simply ask Michelle Beadle. You get there by being a group participant. So a day after a number of media shops rightly called out Pat McAfee for permitting Aaron Rodgers to spew baseless allegations that Jimmy Kimmel is a pedophile, in fact, Smith confirmed as much as defend McAfee, who issued an apology for Rodgers’ feedback.
“I can applaud Pat McAfee for apologizing, but let me be the first to say, he didn’t need to,” Smith said on his podcast Thursday morning. “He didn’t do anything wrong. It’s his show, the show is live, he didn’t know what Aaron Rodgers was going to say.”
First, apologizing when somebody maliciously spews lies and deliberately defames one other individual is what media shops are imagined to do. Second, whereas McAfee didn’t know that Rodgers was going to take a shot at Kimmel, which is apparent from his response, he definitely does know that Rodgers is a unfastened cannon who has been reeling off misinformation about vaccinations, Dr. Anthony Fauci and all method of different conspiracy theories for months. Whereas McAfee won’t have recognized the shape Rodgers’ Kimmel remark would take, it’s ridiculous to assert that McAfee had no concept that his common visitor, whom he pays to be on the present, has a nasty behavior of spouting off baseless allegations. Not solely did McAfee know what Rodgers was, he’s paying for the “privilege” of internet hosting him each Tuesday.
I discovered McAfee’s apology to be skinny and obscure, nearly as if he knew one thing had gone improper, however wasn’t fairly certain what. And, it must be famous, that in all of the clips I’ve seen of Rodgers’ brain-dead statements on public well being, epidemiology, and vaccinations, I’ve by no means as soon as seen McAfee push again. Quite the opposite, he’s given Rodgers increasingly of a leash each time he brings up a subject exterior of sports activities, understanding rattling nicely that too many individuals fall for Rodgers’ galaxy-brained rubbish. Proof? Simply moments after Rodgers’ statements, Twitter was blowing up with folks stating as a indisputable fact that Jimmy Kimmel was on the newly-released Jeffrey Epstein paperwork — an accusation which turned out to be extraordinarily not true.
You would possibly assume that, after somebody has introduced down a world of embarrassment and doable authorized woes to the doorstep, you’d not wish to have them in your present once more. Some would possibly even say you have got an moral obligation to not have them again. However, in his “apology,” McAfee mentioned, “I can’t wait to hear what (Rodgers) has to say about it.” Which means Rodgers shall be again on McAfee’s present, most likely blaming the entire thing on his phrases being taken out of context. And now everybody at ESPN is a winner, as a result of the entire world goes to tune in to see Rodgers attempt to wiggle his approach out of that one. It’s compelling TV, however it’s horrible journalism.
I spotted that, after so a few years of yelling at Skip Bayless and everybody else underneath the solar, Stephen A. might not acknowledge what journalism is meant to appear like, however that doesn’t change the truth that media shops have an obligation to not knowingly put out false info to their viewers. That’s precisely what has been taking place on McAfee’s present for some time.
It’s the pure product of what occurs once we swap out journalists for professional athletes and exchange journalism with a bunch of fellows sitting round a desk screaming at one another. In fact, ESPN has the precise to placed on no matter form of reveals they need and permit whoever they wish to host them. However in addition they want to acknowledge that many individuals get their information, and their worldview, from reveals like First Take and the Pat McAfee present. What’s worse, these beliefs, which Rodgers so cavalierly smirks out, have real-world penalties, for all of us, like spreading infectious illness as a result of Kyle from Kenosha heard a professional athlete inform him it was OK to not get vaccinated.
If ESPN doesn’t really feel an obligation to offer their viewers with the reality, that’s a alternative they’ve the precise to make, however then they’ll’t be shocked when public figures threaten lawsuits and the journalism neighborhood condemns their selections. And we definitely don’t want Stephen A. Smith to gaslight us into believing that that is simply how the media works.
