Media, stop letting unnamed sources attack intellect, work ethic of Black athletes | Opinion

It's worse than you think, the way anonymous cowards keep ripping the attitude or work ethic or, I don’t know, intellect of Black athletes. We've seen that happen directly in the past week to Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson and, indirectly, to Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray. We’ve seen it happen in the past to Kentucky guard Eric Bledsoe, South Carolina defensive end Jadeveon Clowney and too many more.

Sick and tired of seeing it, but as I say, it's worse than what you think.

It's also this: The media allowing it to happen.

The discussion to follow will involve race and nuance, and those two don’t mix well. Bring up race, bring up racism, and some people forget how to read. They forget how to comprehend. Instead, perhaps feeling defensive themselves – can’t imagine why – they start screaming and shouting:

But what about!

Sick and tired of that, too.

Why print anonymous racist attack on Jadeveon Clowney?

DISRESPECTFUL: Murray rips suggestions about study habits, Cardinals remove language from contract

Here’s the thing about the anonymous quote that ran this week in The Athletic, dismissing the accomplishments of 2019 MVP Lamar Jackson as “an athlete … but not a quarterback:”

We didn’t have to write that. The media, I mean. We didn’t have to write it.

Talking specifically to you, The Athletic: You didn’t have to write that. But you did. Did you even think about what was happening, what was being said, what would happen next, what it all meant?

Quick, someone, say what you want to say:

But what about!!!

What about, someone DID say it!

Don’t care. An anonymous quote about a fact is one thing. An anonymous quote about a feeling, an opinion, especially an opinion that sounds like bigotry? That’s something else.

Also: Just because someone tells us something – prefaced by the tantalizing, “Now, don’t use my name, but…” – we don’t have to print it. You understand? There’s no rule that says salacious comments must always be used.

You know what is being used? The media. Hate to break this to you, but the world is full of racists. They’re all over the place, in all lines of work, and some of those people have things to say: Awful things, messages they want delivered to the world at large. Not with their name on it, obviously. So they tell these things to a reporter.

And by golly, we print it. Some examples:

On Baylor QB Robert Griffin III before the 2012 NFL Draft: "I don't think he has vision or pocket feel ... He's just running around winging it." Also: “He doesn't treat anybody good."

On Ohio State cornerback Eli Apple in 2016: “The kid has no life skills. At all. Can't cook."

On South Carolina defensive end Jadeveon Clowney in 2014: “He’s spoiled, and he’s lazy. He’s never worked hard a day in his life, now all of a sudden you’re going to give him a bunch of money and expect him to work hard.  I don’t see it.’’

Dog whistles come no louder.

Racism is ignorance, we all know that. So here’s something unknown by the ignorant scout who ripped Eli Apple’s life skills – including his cooking ability – or the ignorant reporter who printed it:

Eli Apple surely learned something about cooking from his father...

... a retired five-star chef.

You can’t make this up.

Kyler Murray's clause, Eric Bledsoe's transcript

The Kyler Murray story happened organically, almost accidentally, not maliciously. That’s what we’ve been told, and honestly, I can accept that.

While NFL contracts are not public record, NFL Network reporter Ian Rapoport, who broke the story, says he has access to them from certain sources. That’s believable; Rapoport breaks a ton of news. He says he accessed Murray’s contract to look for a potential baseball clause – Oakland drafted Murray ninth overall in the 2018 MLB Draft – when he stumbled onto the clause requiring Murray to spend four hours a week studying film on his own.

Sounds innocent enough, the way the story broke.

The clause itself? Not innocent at all, especially in a league so overtly racist that the NFL had to literally make it a rule requiring teams to interview Black candidates for top jobs. While the interview process is more diverse now, the hires still are not: In a league with rosters composed of roughly 70% people of color, there are just six such coaches (18.9.4%), and seven such general managers (21.9%).

Were the Cardinals being subconsciously racist when they wrote that clause about the work ethic of their Black QB? Can’t tell you that. Can tell you know this: The six men with the most input in that thought process – the franchise’s owner, GM, head coach and tri-offensive coordinators – are white. All six of them.

These are sensitive stories that require care and context and discretion, but too often in the media we don’t worry about any of that. Sometimes this job requires more than merely writing what we know, and letting the chips fall where they may.

But what about!!!!

What you wrote about Carson Wentz!!!

It’s true, I offered to drive Wentz to the airport before his one season even began. It’s true he’s white. It’s also true I put my name on that, didn’t use anonymous sources, just wrote my opinion. There will be people who use my story about Wentz to defend a white reporter letting a white anonymous source rip a Black quarterback. Not sure what to say to anyone who does that, beyond: Bless your heart.

One of the worst stories I’ve ever seen happened to Eric Bledsoe in 2010. I hate even sharing this now, reintroducing it to the conversation, and hope Bledsoe will forgive me and understand that I’m trying to help prevent what happened to him, and to Lamar Jackson and Jadeveon Clowney and more, from happening again.

Bledsoe, you might recall, played one season at Kentucky for John Calipari. Someone who clearly doesn’t like Calipari, a competing coach who apparently recruited Bledsoe hard enough to know what was in his high school transcripts in Birmingham, Ala., leaked a copy of that transcript in 2010 to a New York Times reporter.

The story that emerged painted Bledsoe in a terrible light, and did so with too much innuendo and not nearly enough hard proof that should be required by our country's so-called newspaper of record to attack the intellect of a teenager. The NCAA did nothing to Kentucky, because the school board in Birmingham found no proof of what the anonymous source – and what the Times reporter who ran with it – tried so hard to say: that Eric Bledsoe didn’t belong in college.

But what about!!!!

The IndyStar uses anonymous sources!!!

Of course we do. You have no idea how much we’re told. You have no idea, because we don’t use most of it. Either we can’t, or for whatever reason we simply don’t. Anonymous sources speaking in obvious good faith, offering information that will enhance your understanding of a story? You damn right I’ll use that. Because everybody wins.

An anonymous source speaking with suspect motivations, used by reporters to question the work ethic or intellect of a Black athlete? Listen to me, media: Stop using that. Because you’re being used, you fools.

And everybody keeps losing.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Media lets anonymous racists attack black athletes like Lamar Jackson