I have no desire to defend Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio. As depicted in a recent profile in GQ by Gabe Sherman, he's a self-aggrandizing scoop junkie. But I can't say I have much love lost for the old guard he's replacing, either. This quote, about the Deadspin post that featured lewd photos and voicemails that football superstar Brett Favre (then with the New York Jets) sent to Jets cheerleader Jenn Sterger, explains why:
"It isn't a question of whether or not he should have done the story. It's a story," says Frank Deford, who's been writing for Sports Illustrated since 1962. "But aren't there better stories to do? Do we really want to know about Brett Favre trying to get laid? Wouldn't you rather spend your time delving into the evils of college athletics, or drugs and sports?"
Deford, of course, is a member of the mainstream sports media who (complicitly) kept silent through an entire era of rampant steroid use in baseball, so there's clearly more than journalistic ethics behind his response; when he says "Do we really want to know?" he means that sometimes a player's bad behavior should be suppressed for the sake of his image. But it's not clear that Deford even realizes that what he calls "Brett Favre trying to get laid" is in fact an episode of workplace sexual harassment -- or that sexual harassment, since the NFL has no formal policy addressing it, is probably ripe for some hard-hitting investigative reporting every bit as important as a story on recruiting corruption or drugs. Some of Deford's obliviousness is probably straight-up dudes-will-be-dudes sexism, but it's also true that journalists in all fields have trouble removing the "sex" from sexual harassment. Established journalists, in sports or politics, have traditionally treated sex as off-limits for them to cover -- because it was part of a source's "personal life" -- and inappropriate for their paper to print. Because these journalists were covering powerful figures, of course, the upshot of this was that men in power were entitled to do more or less what they pleased.
Daulerio is making the same mistake in the other direction, of course -- writing about sexual harassment because it's sex. Any good he's doing is entirely accidental, and often undone by his failure to distinguish between shaming the aggressor and shaming the victim. (Deadspin's decision to cover a story about ESPN anchor Erin Andrews getting stalked by posting a nude video the stalker had taken of Andrews is Exhibit A here.) But despite his motives, Daulerio is shattering the silence that protected harassers in the sports world from the consequences of their actions. In the process, he's reminding the NFL and, hopefully, the public (even if Deford doesn't seem to be getting the message) that sexual harassment isn't part of someone's "personal life" at all; it's about using power he's been given for other reasons to abuse those who have less of it.
Ultimately, I agree with Alyssa Rosenberg: it would be great to have a sports site that didn't push women away. A Deadspin that welcomed female fans would, presumably, recognize the difference between important news other outlets won't cover because it has sex in it and sexy "news" other outlets won't cover because it's unimportant.
-- Dara Lind
