While other sports reporters get ready for tonight’s crucial Game 4 in the Celtics playoff against the New Jersey Nets, Bob Ryan will be busy with domestic tasks. He’s trying to make good use of the long days that stretch between now and June 5, when his one-month suspension ends and, as he puts it, ”I resume my life.”Ryan’s not happy about the suspension. He expected less. But ”so be it,” said the man who is arguably the Globe’s best-known staffer.
Many Globe readers have been less accepting. They say that the Globe’s punishment of Ryan was too harsh. Yes, they say, he made a stupid mistake when, in an interview on WBZ-TV’s ”Sports Final” show, he said he would like to ”smack” Joumana Kidd, wife of Nets star Jason Kidd, but he wasn’t serious.
This e-mail summed it up: ”You guys are a bunch of pansies for suspending Bob Ryan. He is the best sportswriter in America, and you will get what you deserve if he leaves your paper. His statement was clearly made in jest. This is liberal political correctness run amok.”
But for every caller or e-mailer who expressed that view, there was another who said roughly the opposite: that Ryan ought to be fired. The message seemed to come from as many men as women, and maybe more; it’s hard to say for sure because the hundreds of calls and e-mails are still being tallied.
One, from a self-described ”white male,” read: ”I would like to remind the Globe that when Howard Cosell and Jimmy the Greek made their comments they were fired, and neither one of them referred to committing violence. I have long admired Bob Ryan’s sports reporting, but his offense is grievous . . . If the Globe does not fire him they implicitly condone his encouragement of violence against women.”
Somewhere between those two camps is where I reside.
I don’t for a minute think Ryan was speaking literally when he said he wanted to ”smack” Joumana Kidd for her camera-seeking ways and the use of her son as a ”prop.” Anyone who knows Ryan knows he’s a gentle soul. In fact, he’s one of the princes among sports writers, a laudable Globe ambassador throughout his long career.
But most readers don’t know Ryan personally. All they heard were his words: ”I’d like to smack her.” It didn’t come across as intended hyperbole — especially not in reference to a woman who has called police to report her husband’s abusive behavior. Rather, it came across as a flip and callous comment about hitting women. Although Ryan’s crime was one of misjudgment, not malice, a one month suspension seems roughly equal to the size and consequence of his blunder.
That said, much about the incident remains perplexing.
Why didn’t Ryan take back the words when host Bob Lobel gave him the chance? ”I don’t have an explanation,” Ryan said last week from his home. He was wrong, he says, to engage in such ”dumb guy talk,” and adds: ”I offer no excuses . . . I was alert, sober . . . I wasn’t on medication.”
He submitted an ”apology column” for publication, but the Globe instead issued a statement. In it, Globe editor Martin Baron called Ryan’s ”smack” comment ”a clear and egregious violation” of Globe standards. Ryan’s apology was included.
Some readers have asked whether The New York Times Co. set the punishment. No, says Baron: ”The parent company does not run our newsroom or micromanage this newspaper.”
The incident puts the spotlight on the blending of print and TV journalism. Print reporters — from high-profile figures such as Ryan to young metro reporters assigned the day’s top crime story — are increasingly called before the cameras.
Nearly half the Globe’s sports reporters routinely appear on television, and the paper does not discourage them or others. Indeed, the newsroom has its own mini-set. The New York Times Co. bought a minority share of the Red Sox in part because the Sox’ ownership of NESN provided opportunities for TV exposure.
”There are plenty of [media] companies . . . who are making this a part of what you are going to do as a journalist,” says Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists. ”If the FCC does as many think when it meets sometime around June 2, you will end up with a new set of regulations that allow newspapers to own TV stations [in the same market], which has not been allowed since 1975.”
At the Globe, reporters who do television interviews are told they must maintain the same standards that apply in print. But the lure of the camera, the pressure of the moment, can prompt reporters or columnists to go beyond what they would write. As Tompkins, a former TV news director, puts it, ”time is the enemy of accuracy and thoughtfulness.”
Especially in the sports interview/entertainment genre, being loud, even outrageous, is the path to success. Find the line of acceptability and walk it; if you cross it, too bad.
Ryan was, in some ways, an unlikely candidate for crossing that line. He’s done more television than perhaps any other sports reporter in town. He knew what to expect. On the other hand, he’s excitable, effusive, and genuinely passionate about sports. Those qualities make him a great sports writer in an age of cynics, but they also added to his risk. He knew that.
By June 5, Ryan will have paid in full the price of what he calls ”atrocious judgment.” Reporters drawn to the camera, or urged there by their papers, can consider it a cautionary tale.
