Score one for journalism.
Kind of.
The historic penalty levied against the Los Angeles Clippers organization by the NBA as a result of egregious measures to circumvent the salary cap in order to secure the services of superstar Kawhi Leonard was the result of an investigation first launched by the “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast.
Torre and his staff dedicated countless hours of research and 15 episodes to documenting every detail of the accusation, discovering new witnesses and evidence with every tug of the thread.
Despite vocal naysayers and doubters, the staff focused on uncovering the truth. It even won a Pulitzer Prize for its efforts.
The league launching its own simultaneous investigation and eventually concluding all the charges levied by the reporters were correct should be a major victory for a profession that has taken too much criticism over the past decade.
The fact that is a self-serving claim is stipulated for the record.
Torre made a tremendous point, however, when he told Variety that “journalism does not exist to be validated by the entity it investigates or by the awards it receives.”
The reporting was supported by enough witnesses and documentation that no one should have needed the league and its independent investigators to co-sign the findings. If that were the case, the rich and powerful simply would have another layer of protection from which to avoid responsibility for improprieties.
It brings to mind the leader of another major sporting organization who likes to call the media useless and remind people journalists never have created anything and exist solely to stand in the way of progress.
Translation: We would be able to push around the little guy in ways we never imagined if you would shut up about it.
Yes, it’s just sports.
But it should remind people the power of journalism is in speaking truth to power. In challenging the richest and most powerful and not allowing them to operate by their rules without fear of repercussion.
That applies to issues that affect real people every day.
One of the biggest tragedies of the past decade is the fanning of the flames of distrust, and outright vitriol, for the fourth estate.
Former ESPN reporter and current University of Iowa journalism professor Wayne Drehs used the occasion of Torre’s report in part to lament the lack of interest and support for investigative and enterprise journalism.
“It’s expensive. It’s exhausting. It’s endless,” he wrote on social media. “You’re going up against the fattest pockets and most powerful people in the world with their PR and crisis management teams discrediting you at every turn. The fight is against unflappable arrogance. The best lawyers. And a public that is trained to believe their carefully targeted messaging over the truth.”
While the general public often gets labeled as uninformed, the reality is it is probably more an issue of being misinformed.
Investigative journalism still matters and remains largely trustworthy, despite public sentiment. Outlets with standards are important and lead to reliable and verifiable results.
It is just harder to identify them. And that allows for enough clouding of the real stories that truth becomes a construct.
Nothing is more discouraging for the future of our society than trustworthy sources posting researched and verified stories on their social media accounts only to be greeted by an endless run of randoms asking Twitter’s chatbot if the story is true.
The Clippers saga should serve as a reminder to look beyond the tweet. To see what outlet is publishing a story and examine its sourcing and supporting evidence. To not let an obnoxious “Fake News” meme on an Instagram post be more believable than an in-depth and deeply reported story.
This could have been a great moment for journalism.
Except that several bloggers, content creators and mainstream access outlets had to bury their heads in the sand and try to throw cold water on the story before it had come to a conclusion, either through malpractice or worse.
Sharp consumers probably recognized the perspective those narratives were being produced from, but not everyone has enough time or bandwidth to take that kind of deep dive.
So any celebration for the profession had to be muted.
But at this point, the way the business has been battered for so long, even a small win is a big victory.
Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on X.
