Suspensions and firings resulted after a strange few days of offensive remarks and images from people in the media. It all started with Kelly Tilghman, Golf Channel’s anchor for the PGA Tour. She seemingly suggested as a joke that young players should take Tiger Woods and “lynch him in a back alley” in order to open opportunities for them to win championships. Not much was said for the few days after that until the media picked up on it and then Golf Channel suspended her for two weeks.
Extensive coverage followed. Golfweek magazine’s editors decided that their cover should show a picture of a noose representing the image of lynching.
Bucky Waters, a former college basketball coach, thought he was praising Connecticut basketball player Jerome Dyson during an ESPN broadcast. He said of Dyson, who had nine steals in a game against St. John’s, “I bet there weren’t any hubcaps left in the parking lot.” Later, he said that Dyson “just stole everything — fillings, hubcaps, the works.” As if that was not enough, he went even further: “It was a holdup, it was a mugging and I don’t know if he is going out after this and hit a couple of convenience stores or not, but he had some night here.”
The usual apologies were made. Tilghman’s colleagues said she was a good person and a friend of Woods’. UConn’s assistant athletic director said Waters was a fine person. Unlike Golf Channel, ESPN reacted immediately and suspended Waters for a game. He also apologized directly to the University of Connecticut.
In my mind, ESPN did the right thing but could have gone further by immediately making its decision public. Instead, it was reported in The New York Times in an article by Richard Sandomir on Jan. 17. ESPN told Sandomir that it was a private matter.
Just about the same time that the Waters story was breaking, Golfweek decided that it would create an additional sense of drama by placing the noose on its cover. The title read “Caught in a Noose — Kelly Tilghman Slips Up and the Golf Channel Can’t Wiggle Free.” The editor was fired almost immediately.
These incidents brought up a study that we did at the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport for the Associated Press Sports Editors when we analyzed the diversity of the print media.
Media controversies focused on (clockwise
from top-left) Golfweek, Tilghman, Waters
and Woods.
The study examined 303 American and Canadian newspapers, and the lack of diversity was stunning. Ninety-five percent of the sports editors, 87 percent of the assistant sports editors, 90 percent of the columnists, 87 percent of the reporters and 90 percent of the copy editors were white. All of those key positions were also 95, 87, 93, 90 and 87 percent male, respectively.
In contrast, so many of the groups of athletes we are covering, especially in basketball, football and baseball, are disproportionally African-American or Latino. While this is hardly true of the PGA Tour, Woods is the dominant player on the tour and is the person who was the subject of the comment about lynching in a back alley. The history of lynching is certainly something that conjures up the worst horrors of racism among African-Americans. While white Americans, including Tilghman, may not be sufficiently aware of that history, it is no excuse for her comments nor later for the use of the noose on the cover at Golfweek. Widespread media coverage and live TV commentary showed that the editor, Dave Seanor, was mistaken when he told The Orlando Sentinel that he did not believe that the cover would offend African-Americans. Seanor had said that he intended to spark intelligent conversation on the hottest topic in golf. There is no question that he has extended that conversation but perhaps he could have done it in a different manner. Now that he has been fired I am sure he wishes that he had.
I do not believe there is any specific remedy that can take care of such issues at Golf Channel, Golfweek or ESPN. Having worked in the world of sports for nearly 35 years, I have no doubt that the stereotypes and insensitivity that were on display this week exist in other parts of those three organizations. They are too common — and often are hidden — in all sectors of America. ESPN has obviously done the best job of hiring more women and people of color in on-air positions. Clearly, Golf Channel, Golfweek and all of America’s newspapers need to open the doors of opportunity to bring more women and people of color into the decision-making positions. If there was a senior editor at Golfweek who was African-American, I am confident that the picture on the cover would not have been a noose. If diversity management training was done throughout the media, we would be more sensitive to the terms. None of it is a guarantee.
However, as long as we keep conjuring up these images in the world of sports where we have made so much more progress than in some of the other areas of our society, it will stand in stark contrast to the fact that we have an African-American and a woman as the leading Democratic candidates for the presidency in 2008. Sports has usually been ahead of the curve and finds itself, as a result of these three incidents, suddenly and, I hope, temporarily, standing behind the curve in terms of race and sports in America.
It is time for an adjustment.
Richard E. Lapchick is the chairman of the DeVos Sport Business Management Graduate Program and director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida.
