ESPN’s daily podcast on Friday devoted itself to the then unfinished pursuit of Shohei Ohtani (he has subsequently signed with the Dodgers for 700 million dollars. For perspective, his annual salary is more than the annual salary of this year’s Minnesota Wild. If you want to be filthy rich, play baseball at the highest level.) and the two reporters were quietly livid about the veil of secrecy Ohtani and his reps have drawn around the process. I found the whole thing amusing and indicative of the way in which reporters are fundamentally broken people. And why that’s okay, as long as we don’t let their values completely rule the roost.
There are a lot of things wrong with reporting in this country: the refusal to call out when both sides are not the same, access journalists who put their sources over the truth, a lack of interest in the effects of policy, an overemphasis on horse race reporting, etc. This post is about none of those things. Rather, this is about the odd personality characteristics that many reporters seem to share: a complete lack of regard for privacy.
The ESPN reporters were exasperated by Ohtani’s decision to keep his free agency as quiet as possible. They had two points, one more important than the other. The first point was that this secrecy helped the Ohtani camp. By keeping teams offers and opinions secret, it helped their negotiating position. I find this semi-plausible, but not entirely convincing. Just because conversations don’t pay out in the press does not mean that the organizations are not talking among themselves. If a team is concerned about Ohtani’s injuries, for example, I am reasonably sure that information is not entirely secret to the other clubs.
But their main concern was that Ohtani owed it to the sport to be more open about himself and his process. Why can’t we know the name of his dog, to be a bit tongue and cheek about the concept. They argued that the money he makes is derived from media rights deals and therefor he has an obligation to make himself at least partially open to the press, to drive fan engagement and therefor fan money to the media outlets that effectively play his salary. Except that this is an entirely blinkered view of why fans engage with their favorite teams. And it comes from the overly dismissive attitude many reports have toward basic privacy.
Fans generally do not care that much about the lives of their favorite players. They don’t mind knowing, but as a rule, they come for the players’ performances. A lot of the defense of players who turn out to be bad people comes from the desire to not lose those performances. Fans engage with the team via the media not because they want to know the name of Ohtani’s dog, but because they want to enjoy the sport. Deep in the podcast, one reporter tells how half the stadium got up and left the all-star weekend’s home run derby after Ohtani was eliminated. The reporter missed the point of that anecdote. In his mind, it showed that Ohtani was such a big star that he needed to be more open for the sake of the sport. What it actually shows is that Ohtani is a huge star without having to give up his privacy. The reporter could not see that because his basic make up wouldn’t allow it. Privacy, to him, is a four-letter word.
And in some cases, that is okay. I want reporters to hunt down important stories that matter. Watergate, the Blackhawk’s cover up of a coach abusing a player, the horrific response of law enforcement to the Uvalde massacre — I want reporters to break the seal of privacy and dig out those stories. They are important to society and having people whose basic nature is to ignore privacy and the concept of mind your own business is helpful. But that is not always so.
The Gawker lawsuit is a good example of this. Gawker posted an explicit sex tape of Hulk Hugan. What they did was morally wrong, and I am largely glad they lost the suit. Reporters and other First Amendment absolutists are probably exploding with rage right now, but there was absolutely no reason to show that explicit tape. The newsworthy material on it — a famous person had an affair — could have been conveyed without the explicit tape. Or if direct access was required to make the point, they didn’t need to leave the tape unaltered so that the explicit portions were shown. Know how I know that? Because reporters do make those alterations and reply on describing explicit or sensitive material rather than showing it all the time.
Yes, I understand that Peter Thiel, who funded the lawsuit, was acting in bad faith. But the point remains: Gawker crossed a line because of their disregard for the concept of privacy. And ESPN is trying to make Ohtani out to be a bad person because of their disregard for privacy. While we need people willing to investigate, we also, as a society, need to reign those people in when they go too far. Not every invasion of privacy is justified, and we don’t need to know everything about every public figure. It is corrosive to human beings to live in a privacy free world. It is not important that we see a naked Hulk Hogan. It is not important that we know every thought that crosses the mind of every GM involved in the Ohtani free agency process. We know that Hogan had an affair. We know that Ohtani is a huge free agent, and we will know when he signs and with who and for how much when it happens. That is enough.
So, ESPN, stop trying to make players who want privacy in unimportant matters the bad guys. Try and focus your overly cavalier attitude toward privacy and secrecy on stories that really matter and leave Ohtani and his adorable little dog in peace. Or don’t be surprised when the rest of us tell you that you have gone too far.
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