John Diaz: Themedia’s role in Ray Rice story

By now, it’s impossible to dispute that the Ray Rice case represents a failure of the justice system and a failure of the National Football League, starting with Commissioner Roger Goodell and the star running back’s team, the Baltimore Ravens.

There’s another unsettling aspect about this case: what it tells us about the role of media in 2014.

It’s not just that TMZ has once again forced an agenda on mainstream media. We may never know whether cash changed hands for the video of Rice assaulting his fiancee in an Atlantic City, N.J., casino elevator. I have earlier expressed my concerns about TMZ’s methods and ethical standards. It openly acknowledges that it pays for information, which traditional news organizations don’t do, and not as amatter of money (thiswas the policy even in the days not long ago when most dominant major metropolitan newspapers and television networks were profit machines). Itwas a matter of prudence: The dollar motive makes for a highly unreliable source of information.

But there is no denying that the Rice video removed any doubt about the brutality of the attack. Once released, it could not be ignored— not in this era, when social media ensures that any story with even a sliver of plausibility will be rocketed to cell phones and laptops everywhere within seconds.

The new video added a chilling detail to the earlier grainy video that showed Rice dragging his fiancee, Janay Palmer, out of the elevator. But a subsequent story by the Associated Press added context to the context: It quoted a law enforcement official as saying that other video of the incident captured that night, which included audio, showed them shouting obscenities at each other and her spitting in his face. It does not in any way excuse his crime, but it provides a backdrop thatwas not revealed by TMZ.

Did TM Zor its source possess and withhold that video for either optimum impact or further release?

What is also disturbing is theway the case exposed the shills who cover professional sports. Thewebsite Deadspin posted an article that recounted the analysts who swallowed the NFL/Ravens line that suggested that the public would be more understanding of Rice’s light two-game suspension if they knew the whole story. The implication: Palmer was somehow culpable for the attack that left her unconscious in an elevator.

I’ma sports fan, and I do savor the insights and rumors dished out by the insider analysts on TV and radio. I also recognize that they often are being used — especially by agents who are trying to drive up the value of a client. And the announcers and analysts are highly vulnerable to being shut off by a team or league if they make waves or veer from the party line. Look no further than Ted Robinson, the play-by-play voice of the 49ers, whowas doing his level best to serve as apologist-mouthpiece for the team earlier in theweek. Robinson also had a couple of choice comments about The Chronicle on KNBR. He chided the newspaper for a headline saying— quite accurately— that 49ers defensive star Ray McDonald had been arrested. He suggested that in “the court of public opinion” there is no distinction between “arrested” and “convicted.” I give our readers far more credit than that.

My colleague from features Peter Hartlaub had a great quip about Robinson’s observation that newspapers were irrelevant in this age. “He said this on a.m. radio,” Hartlaub tweeted.

Of course, the 49ers were no more likely to discipline Robinson for slamming The Chronicle than theywould be if he bad-mouthed the Seattle Seahawks trash-talking cornerback Richard Sherman.

Then Robinson made the mistake of taking the let’s-focus-on-the-victim whispers out loud. He suggested that Janay’s decision to marry Rice after he knocked her unconscious was “pathetic”— and hewas summarily suspended for two games by the 49ers and the Pac-12 network. Process that one, folks: The announcer is deemed unfit to call games because his boorish remarks are an embarrassment to the franchise; the defensive line man who was arrested in connection with a violent crime remains in the starting lineup for the opening of its $1.3 billion stadium.

One of the problems of sports media in 2014, as evident in the Rice case and now the McDonald case, is that so many of the purveyors of information are either dependent on or partners with the people they are supposed to cover. They are too afraid of losing access to challenge their perceived benefactors.

TMZ is proving only too willing to fill the vacuum.

I am proud that my colleagues in the Sporting Green are not among the sycophants in sports media. Scott Ostler and Ann Killion have been consistently tough on the league, including the hometown 49ers’ response to allegations against McDonald, in writing about domestic violence. As far aswe know, there is no video of the incident that led San Jose police to arrest McDonald that early Sunday morning. But there is a 911 call— and that is public record that the San Jose police have refused to release.

It had better not require any TMZ cash to make that recording public.