SPORTS TODD Media cross line when they report juicy rumours
Fans can engage in speculation, but news outlets should simply practice journalism
People gossip. Always have, always will. Joan Didion wrote that we tell ourselves stories in order to live — and if those stories include a nip of naughtiness, a hint of the illicit involving the more exalted citizens in our midst, so much the better. It’s a break from the dreary boredom of the workaday world.
Viewed in a certain light, even Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is simply gossip writ large: “Imperial Minister’s Wife in Steamy Triangle With Dashing Cavalary Officer.” Gossip is in our DNA.
I came onto this beat in March 1994, a few weeks before the defending Stanley Cup champion Canadiens were ousted in the first round of their playoff series against Boston. (Yes, it’s all my fault.) In the midst of that series, you may recall, Patrick Roy was hospitalized to have his appendix removed. Roy would return, but after blowing a chance to win it in Game 6 at the Forum, the Canadiens were eliminated in Game 7 in Boston.
Because this is Montreal, that simple explanation of Roy’s absence would not suffice. Roy was still in a hospital bed when rumours began to circulate saying that Roy had not had his appendix removed at all and that his absence was due to something else entirely. Better juicy gossip than a routine surgical procedure.
If all that sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because we’ve lived through something similar in the weeks since goaltender Carey Price went down with a lowerbody injury suffered in Minnesota. Because the Canadiens, as always, treat injuries like state secrets, all kinds of wild rumours were going around.
This time, it got so bad that Angela Price felt compelled to go on Instagram to deny that she and her husband were having marital problems: “Just for the record I am not getting divorced or threatening divorce nor do I want to leave Montreal. Just in case anyone was interested … though, the rumours have been pretty entertaining.”
I very much doubt that Angela Price found the gossip entertaining, although it was sporting of her to say so. Some of the rumours that came my way were ugly, distasteful and (in some cases) downright libellous.
But the tap, once opened, could not be closed. Fans with the hot gossip are always convinced that their brother-in-law’s cousin who heard it from the dentist’s receptionist has the real inside story.
If fake news can elect a spectacularly unqualified individual as president of the United States, it can also make life uncomfortable for star athletes and their families.
There should be a way to put a lid on this stuff. In Montreal, it’s endless: When I first came on the beat, I heard four different versions of the reason Chris Chelios was traded to Chicago for Denis Savard, all scurrilous.
And I once came home from a Canadiens’ training camp session to find Jean-Luc Mongrain on television, waxing pompous because (horrors!) José Théodore had jokingly flipped the bird at a team photographer during a photo session.
If the media and fans can’t resist a juicy bit of gossip, the hockey world itself is no better. When I first came on the beat, I was startled to find that these jut-jawed, gap-toothed hockey tough guys gossiped like a bunch of old fishwives talking over the garden fence. Like it or not, it’s part of the game.
It might help if the Canadiens would take a grown-up approach to disclosing the exact nature of injuries. The prolonged stonewalling on Price’s injury two years ago did nothing but lead to all kinds of absurd rumours. What was to be gained? Absolutely nothing — except that when Price went down this time, the gossip machine kicked into high gear almost overnight.
Last week, Dallas coach Ken Hitchcock did the entire hockey world a favour when he issued a public plea for an end to the whole upper body/lower body game.
“I think we collectively hate playing the game,” Hitchcock said. “We say upper body, then you go on the phone, and then you look up things or you go to the doctors, find out what part of the upper body … It’s an injury and within two hours after we tell you it’s upper-body you know exactly what it is, so why not just tell you?
“And the players don’t go out and say: ‘he has a broken left pinky and we’re going to go after that pinky.’ Nobody thinks like that ... Tell them what the injury is and move it forward and let’s stop the dance.”
Injury disclosures aside, no one can stop fans from circulating rumours. But people who work in today’s media free-for-all (talk radio in particular) could at least take a more responsible approach. Red Fisher was always the gold standard in that department: Go to Red with gossip and he would growl: “I don’t deal in rumours.”
But when a rumour was going around, Red knew how to handle it. Like the time TSN reported on its website that Pat Burns had died. Red picked up the phone and called Pat, who was shopping with his wife in the Eastern Townships.
One rumour, shot down with a phone call. It’s called “journalism.”