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I just read Sam Duncan’s article, ‘Like it or not, the AFL needs the mainstream media‘.
While his concerns – the invasion of other sports into the Australian landscape, for example – are meritorious, it simply isn’t on the coach of a side to place the responsibility to grow the game.
Nathan Buckley said, quite simply, that his job as senior coach was not to illuminate the public and the media as to the inner workings of his or his player’s minds, their hopes and dreams, or the all-sorted nonsense the media wants us to know about the individuals within clubs (I’m paraphrasing – Bucks is more eloquent than me).
His job is to win matches; if you’re interested in getting information out there, go through the PR departments within clubs.
Now, he might not be doing a great job at winning, but he’s absolutely right. If what Craig Hutchinson wishes for clubs and coaches to do more to grow the game – by what? Granting more exclusives? Via greater media access to the inner workings of the clubs, he then has to get it through the PR department, the desired route for any such request.
Why is it on the coaches and the players – who already spend their lives dominated by their occupations – to grow the game? They are already the product, the end result; their battles shape the value proposition of the AFL, not the off field stuff.
(AAP Image/Julian Smith)
The players have to deal with people camping outside their homes, following their cars. They deal with people ambushing them as they enter their workplace. Then, they spend six days a week embarking on whatever strange and arcane trainings occur behind the closed doors of sports science departments and in club briefings, as well as gym sessions and skill training exercises.
While I wouldn’t – at least for the purposes of this discussion – mind to know what goes on, how many hours are spent in pursuit of victory, do I have the right to invade further in the ongoing perversion of the notion of privacy that the players possess?
Do I have the right, as an AFL consumer, to see into their homes? Do I get to watch them in the gym? Do I have the right to see them around their children?
Do I get to see how they are around their mates, in their down time, what little they possess?
I’m as much guilty of this as anyone else – I come to The Roar for the same reason many of us do, desperate for information; something, anything, that will tide me through until the weekend – but the players, despite their feats of skill, despite their abilities to thrill and amaze, are human beings.
They have the same right to privacy, the same right to respect their personal space, the same need to be alone. And they have the right to share as much as they (not us, and definitely not the media) want with the extra-club public.
Ultimately, what it comes down to is that I, frankly, don’t trust the media. It has people in it who embrace sordid interpretations of reality for the purposes of making a headline, invade privacy for the notions of public interest.
I recognise the fact that, should the clubs not supply the media’s notion of a ‘fair’ amount of access, the media will step in, but why should it be on the clubs to satiate the media’s inexhaustible hunger for news?
And it is inexhaustible. If Graham Cornes – or either of his sons – say anything in Adelaide, regardless of its truth, there are entire talkback segments apportioned to it. If Lance Franklin wakes up too early, there will be someone to report on it. If we give the media greater access, they will again want more, and more, until the players are living in the Big Brother house.
(AAP Image/David Moir)
We roll our eyes at the formulaic phrases that leave a player’s mouth when they speak to the media; ‘one week at a time’, ‘we have to trust out structures’, etc. These phrases, though, serve a higher purpose; they keep that player hidden, within the identity of generic responses.
Sure, it’s untrue, a lie, but in behind it is the reality of things that player may simply not wish us to know, the final vestiges of their privacy. I’m aware that privacy is a dying thing these days, but doesn’t that make its final breathe all the more valuable?
And call me mean spirited, but I trust Craig Hutchison a whole lot less as the determiner of what information is and is not shared than a player hiding behind formulaic responses.
So, in short, suck it up. The media have, repeatedly, demonstrated their inability to be trusted with private information. The prime minister was recorded by a phone at an event that was and has been for generations considered off-the-record event, and it has resulted in strained relations with America. That was a great scoop for the media, but not the public interest. The media is hungry, desperate; they will go wherever they can in the search of something, anything, to sell.
For once, can’t we just watch the footy?
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