The 19th Hole: Garbage political ads are gone, but KPAX football coverage fills void

Note: Memo to Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer: First off, sir, lay off the bottle. The speech, which I am going to assume involved some alcohol, that you gave at the Tester Fest on Tuesday night made you seem less like an innovative governor and more like a frat boy. Secondly, start exploiting children like a normal politician and leave your dog out of it. Sure, we get your precious pooch if Tester sucks it up in Washington, but what are we supposed to give you if you win – a bottle of Jack Daniel’s?

Side note: Britney, call me.

Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, you can probably agree on one thing: Political advertisements are lame. For the past two months in Montana, our favorite commercials about Lucky Charms and Dodge trucks were replaced by he-said-she-said advertisements filled with depressing music that is supposed to depict evil, unflattering pictures and enough crap to fertilize the entire state of Nebraska (and probably parts of Colorado and Kansas, too).

But now that the election season is over, don’t expect your TV to be garbage-free, just yet. The University of Montana football team travels to Northern Colorado this weekend, which means that UM fans will have the privilege (and what a privilege it is) to watch the game on the local CBS affiliate, KPAX.

This means a few hours of watching football that will be vocally illustrated by the voice of Jeremy Jorgenson, KPAX sports director, which is about as appealing to the ears as rusty nails on a chalkboard or a Celine Dion album. But don’t fear, KPAX games can be fun: Just play a drinking game and take a shot every time Jorgenson says something dumb, and by halftime you’ll be too drunk (or dead) to even notice. Also, the KPAX camerawork at times has been so off that it leads one to wonder if the camera operators have been playing the Jorgenson drinking game with Schweitzer.

However, for the most part, the coverage should be appreciated by most UM fans, as a full-season TV deal is unheard of for most I-AA schools. Also, for a team that is as loved across the state as the Griz are, it gives fans who can’t make it to Missoula a chance to root on the maroon and silver.

My problem with KPAX doesn’t come from a fan’s perspective; it comes from a journalistic viewpoint.

The local CBS affiliate KPAX, which has the motto: “Fair. Accurate. To the Point.” However, listening to two seconds of a Griz broadcast is all it takes to find that these broadcasts are neither fair, accurate nor to the point.

The station uses Dave Guffey, the Athletic Department’s information director, as both a sideline reporter and a color commentator, and Jorgenson, at times, kisses up so badly that it almost seems like he’s dating Griz head coach Bobby Hauck. The commentary is incredibly biased and you are probably more likely to ace your chemistry test than you are to hear anything bad mentioned on air about the Griz.

Take, for example, UM’s 33-30 win over Weber State a few weeks ago. While trying to score a touchdown, UM running back Reggie Bradshaw slipped and his knee hit the ground before he could get across the goal line. Now, a blind man who had just been bear-maced probably could have made this call, but Jorgenson and Guffey remained in opposition to the call, despite looking at the play numerous times on instant replay.

How do you fix a problem like this? It’s tough since I am sure that KPAX isn’t bringing in a lot of money with these broadcasts, but it is also journalistically unacceptable to use UM employees and former Griz players in their coverage, and also to accept the broadcasting style of Jorgenson, who represents a prominent branch of the news station. Unless, of course, KPAX wants nothing to do with objectivity, which makes one wonder why it is even in the news business.

Fortunately, the lack of skills up in the broadcast booth got me thinking about the general role of the media in regards to the UM Athletic Department, which now brings me
to the Kaimin.

It’s incredibly easy to sit here and poke fun at Jorgenson and the rest of the KPAX team and fail to look in the mirror. Is the Kaimin much better? Are we guilty of the same biases that we often are so critical of when it comes to ethics classes and just in general discussions?

I mean, we do put out a weekly football magazine called GameDay Kaimin, which I edit, that includes profiles, rosters and other gems but often fails to mention anything negative.

However, GDK, while admittedly not full of hard-hitting news, isn’t packaged as a department brochure, and we do our best to steer our football-beat reporter away from the light-hearted articles, thus avoiding a conflict of interest, something that KPAX does not do well. And realistically, if we, as students at UM, can do a decent job at steering away from being too pro-Griz, than so can a station full of so-called professionals.

So what is the role of the media when it comes to athletics? Should sports be considered news or entertainment? Are sports departments literally the toy stores of their respective papers?

You can debate those aforementioned questions as much as you want, but when it comes down to it, we are still journalists, and as journalists we need to be as objective as possible, even when it comes to covering Bobby and the beloved Griz. Sure, it’s hard not to catch Griz Fever in a town like Missoula, but we run into huge problems when we intermingle our personal lives with what we do at work.

The media and athletics are like that squabbling married couple who hate each other, but are unwilling to separate. The media needs the athletes to sell its papers, while the athletes need the media to sell their program. Trust me, somewhere Ike and Tina are laughing at our dysfunctional relationship.

So for God’s sake KPAX, clean up your act and start acting like “Montana’s News Station.” Sure, your buddy-buddy relationship with the football team might get you those exclusive interviews, but really, should your credibility and journalistic obligations have a price tag?