Earlier this week Gary Sheffield, baseball player for Detroit Tigers, made a stupid comment about how Latin American players are "easier to control" than black players and that is why there are more Hispanics in baseball than black players.
The comment was a fairly dumb. Baseball is low priority for most of the population in America, especially the kids. It saddens me to say that baseball is the least popular of the big three, probably about as popular as soccer (on a whole level, though very probably less popular with the youngsters), and only more popular than hockey. In Latin America, though, it's a very popular sport and the only way a lot of them can get out of poverty. I don't really care about his comment though. What bothers me is that I was watching Mike and Mike in the morning on ESPNews and Greenberg asked an even dumber question of their Hispanic guest (whose name escapes me).
Greenberg asked, "Should [Sheffield's] feet be held closer to the fire on this one?"
What the hell does that mean? You can't seriously ask that. Either Sheffield's comments were out of place and pissed a lot of people off and they'll "hold his feet to the fire" themselves, OR not enough people will care and nothing will happen. If the guest, who said he was pretty close with Sheffield, wants either of the two, then he should campaign for it. Being prompted like that by someone who calls himself a "journalist" is bad. So very extremely bad. Reporters, journalists other news-type people who claim to have some sort of duty to the American republic to involve themselves in the news are bad.
If they want to be advocates or opponents, they need to leave the news business and go form or work for non-profits or other entities in those sorts of capacity. Journalists are supposed to be disinterested parties who tell us things we might otherwise not know about,
not to influence public opinion. They can have their own opinions, but it's immoral and inappropriate for them to use their positions to do so.
It's different if they're like O'Reilly or Larry King who act as commentators not as reporters. Greenberg, in this instance, was somewhere in between. However, he routinely characterizes himself, on the show, as a journalist and is therefore abusing the "public trust" that journalists' and news organizations' are supposed to have. The idea of a public trust for journalists is laughable anyhow, but if they're going to claim its benefits they should at least have the decency to treat their positions with the sort of respect and responsibility that comes along with such a post.
