CDSPN causes debate

Eric Smith & Stephen Kuluris
October 25, 2009
Filed under Columns, Opinions

Point

When senior Keith Wagner came on to [cdstv]’s sports segment, “CDSPN,” earlier last month people expected him to deliver a summary of Corona’s athletics. He then did something totally unexpected; he went and called out the football team in front of the entire student body.

“I was super mad,” senior linebacker Kyle Benson said. “I was confused why a fellow student was bagging on us so bad.”

I couldn’t agree more with Kyle. I myself am a member of the football team, and when I saw the segment in question I was shocked with the things he said.  

Wagner even went so far as to critique fine points of individual units on the team including the defense’s tackling and the offensive line’s blocking. That is a privilege that should be left to the coaching staff, not a student.

“He had no right to say what he said since he has never been on a football field,” Benson said. 

Senior Ben Jimenez said he was most upset by the fact that Wagner “pointed out the mistakes that we already knew we needed to improve on.”

The team members knew they had made mistakes and were trying to improve upon them. However, Wagner crossed a line because he spoke as if he were a coach. He seems to have forgotten that he is a student, not a coach.

He also spoke as if he actually were a reporter for “ESPN,” and picked the play apart as if the team were professional athletes, when the truth is the players are out there because they love the game and want to be out there.

“They are high school student athletes,” Coach Cory Nenaber said “they aren’t getting payed to play, and there’s enough negative in this world that a school publication should focus on the positives.”

Wagner also didn’t seem to consider how the football players, his friends and fellow students, would feel.

Since Keith is a Cross Country runner, perhaps he should have considered how he would have felt if one of the members of the football team had gone on air and had pointed out flaws in the cross country team’s running technique that they had already heard multiple times from their coach.

Since Wagner’s segment the football team has beaten both Desert Vista and highly ranked Basha, and are two wins away from a playoff berth. Chase Cartwright said regarding the team and their feelings now “Our team has moved on.”

Counter-point

Journalism is the art of conveying news to the public via media. This includes newspapers, magazines, radio, television and the Internet. Though journalism has much freedom to research and write stories, it still has regulations in order to keep the public’s trust.

Some of these rules make sure that a piece of journalism is accurate and unbiased. In newspaper, you can’t put your own opinion into a piece of news because you are supposed to be reporting the facts, not analyzing them. However, there is a certain section dedicated to stories that can have the writer’s opinion in it. That’s this page, or the opinions page. The writer can insert their own opinion in the piece, hence the name.

The rules of journalism can change from section to section in a newspaper, or broadcast to broadcast on TV. The differences in broadcasting regulations differ from ESPN to Fox News. ESPN analyzes certain games and says what went wrong for a certain team. The same game displayed on Fox News would only state the score and highlights of the game.

Some people were quite offended by a recent piece of journalism that was broadcast over Corona’s CDSPN.   Senior Keith Wagner wrote and narrated this piece about the football team and the recent losses it had endured. Some looked at this the wrong way saying he “called out” certain players rather than analyzed the game. Because of this, Wagner had received many comments from various players about how it was totally uncalled for and was definitely not appreciated.

But why are they so mad? It is a piece of journalism. He did absolutely nothing wrong. He pointed out the facts of the game and analyzed what has been going wrong for our team. And for that he deserves to receive negative comments? Wagner put in plenty of time for the broadcast making sure his facts were straight, and he did it without an error. There was nothing unfactual about the broadcast.

I was faced with a comment in an argument about this broadcast that said he should have considered how he would have felt if one of the members of the football team had gone on air and criticized the team. But being on the cross-country team along with Wagner, I would not be alarmed. We run in order to try and bring home a city, region or state title. We enjoy all the support we can get, and have an open mind to what went wrong in a race. So I would simply take in what was said and keep it in mind the next time a race.

Wagner’s comments about the football team were part of an analytical piece of journalism, which he has done many times before. It is shameful that some took it the wrong way and gave the reporter threatening comments. Wagner had completed his job of reporting about the game and for that he gets flack? I think it was a piece of journalism and the complaints about it showed just how foolish people can be.