BELIEVE me, I don’t trust the news media any more than you do. For example, someday, although he made it clear that he knows me – heck, he even put it in writing – I hope to meet Gavin Newsham.
Newsham (in this case, NewsSham might be more appropriate) is a fellow who apparently lives in England. He’s now selling a book called “Once in a Lifetime” that indicates that he spent gobs of time interviewing me, as well as three other journalists who are generously quoted.
And while a review of his book praised it as “quote-heavy and detail-rich,” none of the four of us has ever met him, let alone spoken with him.
But if you stick with me, we’ll get back to that.
Early in my newspaper career, I dismissed those with an anti-media bias as folks who had something to hide or were just afraid of certain truths. I put a lot of blind, idealistic faith in journalists.
Thus, for example, while watching “60 Minutes,” when one party in the investigative piece refused to appear on-camera, I figured that the show had the sons of a gun, cold.
Then, one day, I was interviewed by HBO’s “Real Sports,” which was doing a piece on ESPN’s loud and wacky basketball announcer Dick Vitale. I was happy to help. I’ve known Vitale for years, and, while his style makes him an easy target, I like him. After all, he’s a very loud man with a habit of very quietly doing wonderful acts of charity.
And sitting for that HBO interview, I made that clear. Or so I thought.
When the piece aired, all of my soundbites were the few thumbsdown comments I made about Vitale. Viewers might have gleaned that, in addition to being his No. 1 detractor, I hate him. I felt burned and victimized by the news media.
A few years ago, I spoke to an ESPN crew about, among many other things, Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue. I noted that the swimsuits seem to shrink to nothing when they get anywhere close to water, and that SI, while annually cashing in on a “naked hot babes” issue, at all other times condemns those who treat women as sex objects.
This past February, some readers e-mailed to let me know that they saw me, the night before, in a new ESPN show, discussing the latest SI swimsuit issue. Huh? What?
ESPN simply dropped the old footage into the new show, as if I’d been interviewed that week, to coincide with the publication of SI’s latest swimsuit issue. And that ain’t right.
Back to Newsham. The Tribeca Film Festival recently presented “Once In A Lifetime,” a 93-minute documentary narrated by Matt Dillon, purchased by Miramax and soon to appear on ESPN, about the New York Cosmos, the star-studded, news-making pro soccer team of the late 1970s that, by 1983, had flamed out.
Having covered that team, I, along with the three aforementioned sportswriters, two years ago sat for two lengthy interviews with the England-based producers of the documentary. We appear in the film, and, initially, were happy to help.
But three months ago, word reached us that a book by the same name and theme as the documentary was on sale in the U.K. Its author, Newsham, had lifted much of the book’s content from the transcripts of what we had only provided to the producers of the documentary.
Our words were handed over – perhaps sold – to Newsham.
And now Newsham’s selling a book in which, it seems clear, the four of us spent many hours discussing the subject with him. And none of us have ever, in any way, spoken with him. And that ain’t right.
It doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens enough. And that’s but a few reasons why I don’t trust the news media, either.
