It’s all about clicks and ratings these days for web journalism and TV broadcasts, respectively: “Give the audience what they want to hear, or else we’re not going to make any money.” While FOX News may be the most egregious example of this, nationally, the sports world is not immune to the same erosion of public trust in journalists, as we have seen over the last 30 years. This was confirmed, again, this week, sadly.

A Baltimore Orioles TV broadcaster—employed by the team and/or its regional sports network, which are one and the same, basically, when it comes to profiteering off fake news—was removed from the media team for pointing out the team’s factual struggles against a division rival. The reporting of facts should not disqualify a media professional from employment … except that it often does, as we have learned.

So much of this started with the TV ratings frenzy of the early 1990s, when teams started broadcasting on regional networks and had to keep ratings high to pay for the escalating costs of TV rights. Take WGN, Chicago’s superstation: its early ’90 White Sox broadcast team of Ken Harrelson and Tom Paciorek was renowned for openly cheering for the Pale Hose on the air. It was a disgrace at the time to real journalists.

Now, it’s the norm: why? Well, fans prefer rose-tinted glasses and perspectives of their favorite team(s). And to prove it, a hack like Harrelson was named the 2020 recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award, presented annually for excellence in broadcasting by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. The low bar he and Paciorek set in the 1990s became the standard for all teams across all sports: spin it good, fellas!

By the early 2000s, for example, the San Francisco Giants—knee deep in PED use and media denial—employed Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper on the air, spinning garbage lines, one on top of the other, about the team. Nicknamed “Kruk & Kuip” by the local fans, the two were affectionally known as “Puke & Hype” to local print journalists … for obvious reasons. Some of our favorite lines of theirs, so laughable:

  • “Yorvit Torrealba is the best backup catcher in the National Leeague.”
  • “Omar Vizquel is the best shortstop in MLB history at catching infield pop-ups.”

What do those statements even mean? Torrealba posted a .712 OPS in 220 games for the Giants from 2001-2005, and he became the second S.F. catcher to go to Colorado after his time by the Bay … and hit even worse (the first being Kirt Manwaring). Point is, his OPS+ mark (86) demonstrated he wasn’t even average at his position with the bat, and his 1.4 dWAR with the Giants proved he was barely adequate defensively.

But sure … why not use hyperbole to label him as the best backup catcher in the National League? Those numbers mean we don’t even have to fact check the statement to know it’s baloney. We knew it then; we know it now. As for the other comment, how would one even measure that metric? Sure, Vizquel was an 11-time Gold Glove winner, and most of those awards were legit. But the fact remains it’s an asinine claim.

Yet ignorant and sycophantic fans believe what they hear from these so-called “experts” who are actually peddling lies to keep the audience tuned in, forever hopeful. As Kuiper once joked on the air—we shit you not—”the Giants never lose, folks … they just run out of innings to win.” We’re not psychologists, but the American phenomenon of choosing myths over facts has a lot to do with sports, too, not just politics.

The sad thing is that local print media has had to follow the same route these days, with subscriptions to newspapers dwindling in favor of Internet coverage. Local newspapers lie to their audiences regularly, never really criticizing a team, for fear of losing subscriptions—whether print ones for the older audience or digital ones for the younger audience. The world of journalism has become a profiteering spin game.

As we have said here before, it’s called willful ignorance in a reality-distortion zone created of our own cognitive dissonance: a refusal to accept ethics, facts, law, logic, morality, reason, and science in our thought processes on what constitutes the real world around us. The Orioles may have removed a voice of truth from their broadcasts, but smart fans would be wise to ignore the local broadcasts/media, anyway.

Do your own research and find your own facts. And then share them like it’s your job, folks. Period.