Columnist Dean Juipe: Why can’t TV broadcasters tell the truth?

Dean Juipe

Thursday, May 28, 1998 | 9:16 a.m.

SPORTS REPORTING within the print medium has changed considerably, even drastically, over the years. The same, however, can't be said of sports broadcasting.

Today's print reporters are nothing like their predecessors. In the old days, a beat writer was "one of the boys" who covered a team while protecting the players and their many foibles. He travelled with the team and wouldn't dare reveal more than what he felt the reader "needed to know."

The job has evolved over the years to where a beat writer not only will take a shot at the team he's assigned to cover, he may at times feel compelled to rip into the players or management. And if the beat man is reluctant, there's always a columnist willing to tackle the tougher or more sensitive issues.

At any reputable paper, objectivity is not only a reasonable goal but a necessity. Reporters feel duty bound to provide both the good and the bad news about the team or the event they're covering.

Unfortunately, this unbiased approach has yet to find its way to the broadcast booth. Far too often, the viewer is stuck with slanted coverage that frequently distorts reality.

Take Sunday's Indianapolis 500 for example.

It seems absurd, yet the TV announcers were so intent on portraying every aspect of the race in such a positive fashion that they refused to tell viewers why the start was delayed some 30 minutes.

It turns out a dog was running loose on the track and, in what had to be a hilarious chain of events, everyone from security personnel to the Purdue Marching Band joined the chase. For some reason, as if this was simply too embarrassing for the Speedway, those in the broadcast booth did everything but pinpoint the dog as the reason for the delay.

(In the early days of baseball on the radio, when transmission difficulties were commonplace, announcers habitually used the "dog on the field" ruse to disguise the truth if they had gone off the air for a few minutes. There was even a good-natured acceptance of such harmless tales back then.)

Also at Indy, the announcers exaggerated the attendance in still another attempt to paint an everyone-is-happy picture at the troubled event.

It seems as if viewers watching sports on TV are routinely misled. They're fed artificial stimuli and told outright fallacies, all in an effort to portray the event and its participants as terrific, unblemished individuals committed to excellence. Remember the X Games? Remember being told that some street tobogganist or roller skater was the "world's greatest athlete"? Remember how ridiculous that claim seemed both then and now?

Even at the highest levels of professional sports there is outright deception from broadcasters not only hired by the teams they cover but by broadcasters employed by networks which have invested millions of dollars in the product. The Masters golf tournament won't allow a hint of negativity on its telecasts, and a team like the Chicago White Sox, whose games are regularly seen on cable, employ announcers so patronizing they're actually repulsive.

Why does it have to be this way? Why is objectivity replaced by hyperbole?

Why can't Indy 500 viewers be told the race is being held up until the Purdue band chases down a frisky dog?