The WNBA's Media Paradox
The burgeoning league wants more media coverage — but also less access. What gives?
Dear readers,
When we began this newsletter in 2020, following the wildcat strikes that shut down several major sports leagues around the country, we were confident that professional sports leagues in America were entering a new era, where athletes would proudly and openly raise their voices on a host of issues from racism to labor relations to electoral politics. The sports media, we hoped, would cover them as the serious political actors that they aspired to be.
We were right to predict a seachange of sorts — but the era that we’ve entered hasn’t played out exactly in the way that we expected. Instead of voicing their opinions, as we (perhaps naively) imagined that they would, players are now raising their voices to tell the media, “Please leave us alone.” We’re digging into the dynamics of that shift below.
-Ian and Calder
This week, the Washington Post’s Ben Strauss dug into one of the thorniest contradictions in the world of women’s basketball.
Here’s the context: For the past few years, players and executives from the Women’s National Basketball League (WNBA) have been calling for more and better media coverage of the league. And they’re right to do so: The league is currently exploding in popularity, yet according to some market research done in 2021, women’s sports still receive less than 5 percent of total sports coverage in the U.S. Women’s basketball receives only a fraction of that coverage.
But here’s the rub: At the same time as the league and its players are calling for the media to make the sport more accessible to fans, the reporters who cover the league are claiming that the players are making themselves increasingly inaccessible to the media. According to Strauss’ reporting, the WNBA itself — which is tasked with enforcing access rules — has been notably lax about punishing players who fail to meet their media obligations.
The problem was especially apparent, Strauss writes, following the Las Vegas Aces’ recent victory over the New York Liberty in the WNBA Finals — a championship series that drew record-high viewership numbers. But the post-title coverage was notably muted. As Strauss reports, “The famous scenes of athletes celebrating in champagne-soaked locker rooms never emerged because cameras were not allowed to capture them.”
This perplexing dynamic is drawing the most scrutiny in the WNBA, given the rapid rise of the league’s popularity, but the truth is that something similar is unfolding all across the world of professional sports. In the NBA, for instance, Leon Rose, the president of the New York Knicks, hasn’t spoken to the media since a virtual press conference announcing the team’s new coach in July of 2020. At the 2021 French Open, Noami Osaka notoriously skipped a mandatory press conference, incurring a fine from the tournament organizers. Other examples abound.
Predictably, members of the sports media have loudly decried this shift, claiming that’s ruining both their jobs and the broader information ecosystem that’s available to fans. (Strauss’ reporting is Example A.) As members of the media ourselves, we understand their plight. But the issue is a little more thorny than anyone is making it out to be.
First, let’s be honest about what we’re dealing with here. Historically, sports coverage from major mainstream publications has — with some notable exceptions — been shockingly bad. Players are routinely misquoted, hounded for poor play and willfully misunderstood and misrepresented by reporters. This has been a particular problem in women’s sports, where the coverage tends to veer between casual condescension and overt sexism.
So from the players’ perspectives at least, this shift makes some sense: Players don’t want to open themselves up to bad media coverage, especially when they can reach their fans — and make money — through social media and corporate partnerships.
Unfortunately, the new system that has emerged is even worse than the old one. Because of league-mandated media accessibility rules, the press’s access to players hasn’t been shut off entirely, but it has narrowed to reporters who are, in effect, glorified stenographers. With a few exceptions, today’s beat reporting is a lot closer to fan-run blogging than it is to real journalism — and that’s not an accident. The reporters who get access to players are the ones that players and executives trust to write flattering stuff about them.
A recent exception that proves the rule is Jake Mintz, a reporter for Fox Sports who also hosts a popular baseball podcast on Sirius XM. Mintz doesn’t usually cover the Atlanta Braves, but he found himself in the team’s clubhouse after Game 2 of this year’s NLDS between the Braves and the Philadelphia Phillies. During post-game media access in the clubhouse, Mintz overheard Braves shortstop Orlando Arcia yelling “atta-boy Harper!” — an apparent jab at Phillies star Bryce Harper, who had made the final out of Game 2 on a boneheaded play. Mintz reported Arcia’s taunt, which eventually made its way to Harper, who proceeded to torment the Braves in Game 3 by staring down Arcia after hitting two monster home runs.
It’s the kind of shenanigans that happens every year in the postseason, but the Braves players were apparently not happy that Arcia’s comments saw the light of day. “The clubhouse is a sanctuary, and I think when things like that get out, it doesn’t make people want to talk to the media at all,” opinioned Braves catcher Travis d’Arnaud.
Respectfully, give us a break. Whatever it may be, the clubhouse is not a sanctuary, and reporters are in the room for the precise purpose of reporting on comments like Arcia’s. Note that d’Arnaud was not accusing Mintz of misquoting Arcia or taking his comment out of context. He was just mad that Mintz had accurately reported a nasty comment from his teammate.
But herein lies the paradox of the new coverage paradigm: Players retreat from the media spotlight because they are (understandably) skeptical of reporters who have historically done a careless job; in the process, good reporters lose access to players, which perpetuates the players’ fantasy all reporters should be friendly reporters; which means that when a decent reporter actually comes along and do her job, players get angry and further restrict access to the media, and the paradox deepens: Leave us alone — but also, please pay attention.
Which brings us back to the WNBA. For all the talk about digital and social media’s potential to transform the relationship between players, leagues and the press, the basis of that relationship has stayed fundamentally the same: the WNBA still needs traditional media to attratck viewers and bolster its legitimacy, and reporters still need access to players and executives to draw readers to their publications. Some honest level-setting is required from both parties: Players need to accept that more media attention means more attention on both the flattering and the unflattering aspects of the sports; and reporters need to acknowledge that more access means more responsibility to use that access to tell interesting stories and inform fans, rather than merely to chase clicks.
But all the parties need to understand current status quo serves no one especially well: not the players, not the reporters, and especially not the fans.
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