This went viral:

There’s a lot going on here. Let’s break it down:

  1. What have you done for us to talk to you about all year?” is an asinine thing to say to a professional athlete, let alone one who has been dealing with injury. Talk about arrogant. I am embarrassed for that guy.
  2. If the goal was to “seek clarity,” then these reporters failed, because we didn’t get a meaningful response from Gio Bernard. We got canned crap instead, because he really didn’t want to speak and the engagement was initially combative.
  3. The reporters ended up making themselves the story, so that’s a second failure.
  4. The PR guy does a reasonable job. Not sure if he was originally within earshot, but he does get in there and say something to the effect of “okay let’s ask a question please.” It’s his job to protect the players, but he can’t monitor every scrum at the same time.
  5. This entire clip reeks of entitlement and self importance. You’d think these two were trying to sniff out Russian collusion. A botched fake punt is not that important.
  6. Laine could have just posted the answers on Twitter. Not sure what the point of the full video is other than to say “look at how good of a journalist I am.

This is the kind of stuff that fans hate and a good example of why people are so down on the media these days. It’s really not that important, the outcome of a regular season football game. If the guy doesn’t wanna talk, he doesn’t wanna talk. Plus, the Bucs did a lot of things wrong in blowing a two-score lead against the Bengals, so whatever. You’d think Gio was Bill Buckner after watching that clip.

People on the other side will say that athletes need to be accountable and should make themselves available, and that’s true, to a certain extent. In most sports it’s contractually mandated, and you should communicate to the fans, though my take is that it doesn’t have to be after every game and the media doesn’t necessarily have to be the conduit. You can go on your social media accounts if you want to.

Of course, if you build working relationships with the players and teams you cover, then exchanges like this rarely happen in the first place. Trust has to go both ways, and when you had guys like Phil Jasner in the Sixers locker room, for instance, you got hard questions but fair answers, because old school reporters understood that it was a two-way street and not some dog and pony show.

EDIT – I would say there does seem to be a divide along generational lines here. I think old school fans put more stock in the “getting answers” mindset while younger fans don’t seem to give a shit one way or another. If you’re one of the people who thinks there’s been a rise in “fanboy” media then you know what I’m talking about. There’s been a shift towards player favorability over the years, I think, while “hard questions” are less important.