Early Tuesday morning a backup lineman for the Jacksonville Jaguars, Richard Collier, was severely injured when he was shot outside an apartment complex. Apparently he and former Jacksonville teammate Kenneth Pettway were waiting in a Cadillac Escalade waiting for two female companions when the attack occured.
I find the reporting of this shooting very interesting. Not because it appears to be yet another NFL player involved in an incident such as this, but rather because in the article the reporter also mentions Collier’s arrest in November for a DUI, in which he was found asleep behind the wheel at a McDonald’s drive through.
I am not sure why the two are linked and why the arrest is important to the story? The story is not about the player being in trouble, and at the current time, it appears, that this was a random attack. So why the need to report the past incident?
I am usually one to think that we are quick to throw out the race card instead of having real discussions about race, but this time I have to wonder. A young black NFL player was shot and reporters felt the need to bring up a past arrest for an unrelated charge - one that would have absolutely no impact on the current situation? It seems baseless at best, and slanted at worst. It appears that it was included as a kind of - “he has a troubled past” - kind of angle, when in reality they are totally unrelated. Would this be reported differently if this were a white player? I would hope that there would be no differences but I don’t know.
What do you think - is there a bias in sports journalism, or am I just reading too much into this?
3 responses so far ↓
1 Dani // Sep 3, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Reading about the same incident I came across a description of what the girls were wearing… one in a short black dress and the other in a short silver dress. That struck me as odd until I realized that the reporters were insinuating that these girls were actually prostitutes without coming out and making an accusation. Reading about prior offenses sort of made sense at that point because the journalists thought that they were onto something different… Not just a poor victim in the wrong place at the wrong time, but a celebrity and his friend who were waiting for prostitutes and possibly got set up for something.
We don’t know the real story yet and the reporters taking the liberty to twist it that way *is* wrong. If it does turn out that what he was doing at the time wasn’t kosher, all bets are off. They can bring up his checkered past all they want.
As for whether or not it was a racist journalism, I’m on the fence. I can’t really be sure because I don’t have a lot of “white guys getting shot for no reason” stories to compare it with. Do you?
2 Chris // Sep 3, 2008 at 9:53 pm
I saw the same thing about the women and wondered about the insinuation. If it were pertinent to the story I understand but…
I would love to see have the time to research to see if stories are written in the same manner for all athletes. I do know that there have been many a white player who has put themselves in stupid situations.
I don’t want to jump right to race, I just want to start a dialog to see what people think
3 Dani // Sep 3, 2008 at 10:16 pm
The thing is, I honestly can’t think of any white players getting themselves in a similar situation. (How would a person Google that? lol!)
Throw me some players names and I’ll do the Googling. You’ve sparked my curiosity.
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