Let’s end live TV coverage of politicians talking

When the audience for CNN’s live “Town Hall” laughed at Donald Trump’s ridiculing of a proven sexual assault victim, do you think CNN’s president was pondering how many alienated Fox News viewers he would capture, or maybe how happy a conservative billionaire on CNN’s board would be? I know he wasn’t doing what he should have been doing: Vomiting.

Wednesday night’s live event manufactured by CNN was predictably disastrous. Even some CNN employees anonymously acknowledged the shame the cable network had brought upon itself. Trump discharged his familiar lies endlessly despite the commendable but essentially ineffective efforts of moderator Kaitlan Collins, a UA journalism grad with a track record of aggressive questioning of Trump.

CNN had to know what it was going to get from Trump. Either it didn’t care or foolishly thought it had a way to mitigate. Its baffling choice for an audience – Republicans who supposedly were still deciding who to support for president in 2024 – tells me it didn’t want to mitigate anything.

Many media critics and academic researchers argue persuasively that responsible news media must no longer give time or space to liars and haters, no matter how prominent they are. I have previously argued against this, believing it’s easier to fight a known enemy than a hidden one, and believing in the ability of the audience to recognize the bad guys.

This view is increasingly hard to defend. Consider first the gullibility and denialism of large segments of the American public. Consider also that lies and hate speech don’t merely poison civic conversations. They can, in the minds of extremists, justify violence. And they have.

But it’s unlikely the news media will decide to ignore people of established political influence, including the malignant ones. The danger inherent in this demands at least that TV networks will not serve as puppets.

Toward this end, it’s time for networks to stop live broadcasting of events in which elected politicians talk. This means town halls, debates, speeches, rallies, one-on-one interviews, whatever. It’s just too impossible to do effective, real-time fact checking. The power of a moderator, if there is one, is limited.

Instead, show these events on tape, loaded up with visual, annotated truths. Excerpt the daylights out of them. Render them to voiceovers or graphics. Splice in knockdowns. (CBS’s controversial taped interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene in April would have benefitted from this, as “Wow” is not an effective knockdown.)

I make no distinction based on the person or the political party. But a network reasonably could. That would mean less live air for Republicans like Trump, but they’ve earned that.

I don’t think an end to live TV coverage is enough to neutralize the toxicity of some of our elected leaders and candidates. But it’s a big step up from the debacle that CNN gave us Wednesday night.

If you’re a reporter, how sneaky are you willing to be? Here’s a test.

first story by the mccurtain (oklahoma) gazette-news.

I’ve never seen “sneakiness” listed among the requirements for any reporter jobs but maybe it should be.

A reporter for the McCurtain (Oklahoma) Gazette-News ended up with a flabbergasting story when he secretly left a voice-activated audio recorder in a public meeting room after citizens were told to leave a session of the McCurtain County Commission. The reporter, believing county officials had a practice of continuing to discuss government business in violation of the state open meetings law, retrieved the recorder and discovered comments lamenting that Black criminals couldn’t be lynched anymore and talk of killing local reporters.

Since the paper’s first report on April 15, the local Black community has held public protests, one of the officials has resigned, and the FBI is investigating. The newspaper, whose story got national media attention, released the full three-hour audio on April 21.

Various recent media reports offer conflicting views of whether the reporter broke Oklahoma law about secret recordings. The key question seems to be whether, in that setting and with other people in the room, the people in the conversation had a reasonable expectation of privacy.

 The reporter’s actions got me to thinking about other circumstances in which the reporting process may enter an ethical gray area. Journalists shouldn’t break the law, but that doesn’t mean they should engage in any and all conduct that’s legal.

Here are some scenarios of newsgathering – all from real-life situations that I’m familiar with – that require at least a moment’s pause and contemplation. I don’t think any of these are illegal. (Check your state’s laws anyway so I’m not responsible for you getting life in prison, OK?) For each of these, there isn’t an obvious, consensus answer. Would you do any of the following, if the story were important enough?

• You see two newsmakers at the restaurant table next to yours. They’re talking loudly and you can hear everything they say about a newsworthy topic in which they are involved. Do you report what they say? (I say yes, but only after giving each individual a chance to elaborate, clarify or backpedal the next day.)

• Similar scenario but this time it involves adjoining hotel rooms. (Don’t scoff. This really happened.) (I would treat this as off-the-record information and use it to try to leverage on-record confirmation from the newsmakers or others.)

• A newsmaker is giving a speech at a meeting advertised as open to the public but not to the media. (Again, this really happened.) Do you remove your press badge, attend and report? (I’d have zero problem with that.)

• Let’s make the previous scenario more complicated. The speech is open to a club that has 200 members but not to the media. With so many attendees, you know you could blend in and get inside. Would you do that and report? (I’m a “no” on this one.)

• You need a phone interview with a central figure in a major controversy, but the bureaucracy (secretary, media relations person) is putting up blockades. Would you claim to be someone other than a journalist just to get past the call screeners? (That’s another “no” from me.)

• You’re doing an interview with a newsmaker in their office. On their desk is a letter that you’re able to read and you can see from the subject line that it’s about a major story that you’ve been covering. Do you keep reading to see if it’s news you should get confirmed later? (I would advise not to read it.)

• You anticipate a contentious interview with a key person in a high-profile news story in a state that doesn’t require all parties to a conversation to consent to being recorded. You doubt the person will grant permission, but you want the public to hear it for themselves. Do you secretly audio record the interview? (I would do so but not make it public unless the interviewee publicly challenged my accuracy.)

• In response to a public records request, you get a document that is partially blacked out. But the redaction is poorly done and you can see what’s hidden or have the technology to defeat the redaction. Do you publish the hidden information? (Yes, in a heartbeat. The Crimson White did this once for some SGA election results and it was beautiful.)

As I said, the importance of the information in these situations is key. In McCurtain County, knowing that some of your government leaders are racist and fascist was well worth all the sneakiness involved.

A demon and a Lemon: Big-name firings were not the same

You ought to do some soul-searching if you’re a big-time media figure who gets fired and the media reporters have to offer possible reasons in list form.

But that won’t happen with Tucker Carlson, who, despite being fired by MSNBC, CNN and now Fox, is incapable of shame. And maybe couldn’t find his soul anyway.

One remarkable aspect is that Fox even did this to its biggest ratings winner. I feel certain it was not because of anything Carlson said on air because he crossed any boundaries that might exist a long time ago. It may well have sprung from offensive comments off the air about top Fox executives. But almost certainly it had something to do with money.

Fox may have decided he’s a legal liability, since he mightily bolstered the Dominion Voting System lawsuit against the network and attracted another lawsuitt from a former “Tucker Carlson Tonight” producer who claimed Carlson and other show executives created a hostile work environment for women.

Which brings up another remarkable aspect: The continuing self-destruction of male national TV news stars due to credible allegations of sexual assault or harassment. I can think of Carlson (hostile environment is a form of harassment), Bill O’Reilly, Chris Cuomo, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Chris Matthews, Mark Halperin, Eric Bolling and Ed Henry. Phew, I gotta rest. Don Lemon too, although he didn’t get fired at the time.

Obviously, abhorrent behavior like this takes place in all kinds of fields and institutions. But I think a heady combination of ratings, fame, ego, money and power leads to the feeling that they can do whatever they want to whichever subordinate they want – and are even entitled to it.

And in the case of someone like Carlson, when your nightly job is to denigrate the less powerful groups of society, it’s only a short step to practicing misogyny in your real life.

I’ve written about Fox News before (here and here). With its history, Fox may be more mindful of its treatment of women today, but I hold no hope that Carlson’s firing signals a lasting change to the dreck it churns out on its primetime opinion shows.

As for Carlson, in older days when there were only three, over-air networks, he’d have nowhere else to go. But today there’s always a right-wing cable network or website or podcast that’s got a bad agenda and no standards. In other words, the only kind of medium where Carlson could work.

Don Lemon

The longtime, opinionated CNN anchor got fired the same day Carlson did. But Lemon’s ouster was a bad decision.

Yes, Lemon said stupid and offensive stuff too often. But if media reports are correct that he was fired for violating CNN policy against challenging Republican guests on its shows, that’s a black mark for CNN’s new leadership. Maybe don’t call out your own control room as Lemon did, but pushing back is exactly what interviewers are supposed to do.

In Brandon Miller case, blaming the media is way too simple

The University of Alabama men’s basketball program ended its season Friday having squandered its national championship chances and its good reputation. In the same process, the reputation of the news media took a thorough pounding, as well.

Many UA fans blamed the press – mostly the press outside of Tuscaloosa – for sparking national hatred of the program that showed itself in arena chants and on social media, culminating with death threats and armed security for star player Brandon Miller, who was part of the chain of events that led to the shooting death of a young mother. I got to wondering if the blame was valid.

This first requires recognizing that the news media didn’t all react to the story the same way and so can’t be lumped together. Some journalists, especially local ones, argued adamantly that Miller had done nothing wrong and that UA’s zero punishment was the right decision. On the other extreme, some commentators declared this the biggest disgrace in college sports history, warranting the end of Miller’s season, the firing of coach Nate Oats, and the suspension of the program while you’re at it.

The most clearly inexcusable conduct was the reports that couldn’t get the facts straight. More excusable, but still a target of criticism, was the accurate reporting of police accounts of the shooting that later seemed not to match everything that happened. It is becoming more common for news organizations that publish police statements about major cases to launch independent reporting to confirm or challenge those statements. (Tuscaloosa Patch was one that did that in this case.)

Against this backdrop, I wondered if the reporting and opinionating could have incited the venom of fans around the nation.

“Blame cannot simply be assigned to media; however, the media can certainly play a role in triggering anger, outrage, and other strong emotions,” said my department colleague Dr. Scott Parrott, a sports fan who teaches what academia calls “media effects.”

In an email, he cited “media personalities who make livings on controversy.” Their aim is conflict. “The approach divides sports fans into ‘us’ against ‘them,’ which elicits even stronger emotions and divides us. Politicians use the same tactic.” 

Other factors are at work, too, Parrott said, naming social media and the intense nature of sports fandom. “Debates over morality and justice carry over into social media, where people can comment under the cloak of anonymity — we have all seen how poisonous social media can be. When you throw in fanship, it can become an emotional powder keg in which empathy and rational thought disappear, and people are so angry they threaten the life of a young man.”

For the Saturday NCAA games in Birmingham, I sat among the avid and the rabid. And I was reminded how mean-spirited some sports fans can be. The news media and the university certainly aren’t blameless in the saga of UA’s basketball season, but there’s a whole lot more going on than that.

A speculative Top 10 list of Fox News’ “journalistic processes”

FOX BUSINESS HOST LOU DOBBS WAS AMONG SEVERAL FOX PROGRAMS THAT GAVE AIR TIME TO SIDNEY POWELL AND OTHERS TO MAKE FALSE CLAIMS AGAINST DOMINION VOTING SYSTEMS. ONE DAY AFTER A LAWSUIT BY ANOTHER VOTING COMPANY, FOX CANCELLED DOBBS’ SHOW.

Fox News may not be capable of shame, but the public humiliation of it from the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit just keeps getting better.

Dominion claims Fox News damaged it by knowingly broadcasting false claims that Dominion engaged in vote fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Among the current legal contests in the case is whether to protect or reveal some internal Fox communications that are currently blacked out in legal filings.

On March 10, Fox lawyers argued for continued secrecy because “prematurely disclosing these other details on Fox’s internal and proprietary journalistic processes may allow competitors to appropriate these processes for their own competitive advantage….”

Just goes to show that you can find good comedy anywhere.

It’s hard to conceive that whatever Fox wants to keep hidden could be worse than the journalistic malpractice that other internal Fox correspondence in the case has already revealed. (For honest observers of Fox, confirmed is a better word.) Even harder to conceive is that Fox has some trade secrets that competitors might want. Newsmax, maybe. Anyone credible, never.

I tried to envision Fox’s “proprietary journalistic processes.” I imagine it’s a Top 10 list something like this:

1) Decide stories based on ratings. Same with opinions. Doesn’t matter what you really believe.

2) Distort truths that our audience won’t like. Make up claims that they will.

3) On matters of life or health (e.g. pandemics), exceptions to No. 2 are not required.

4) Appeal to fear and racism (e.g. crime, immigration). They go hand in hand.

5) Attack vulnerable people. They don’t have enough money to buy ads.

6) Hammer on topics that hurt our political opposition before an election. Then forget about them.

7) Accompany all unsubstantiated statements with “we’re only raising questions” or “we don’t know that this isn’t true.” Or invite guests who will say them for you.

8) Treat all guests with respect. Don’t challenge them on anything.

9) Inform supervisors of any Fox journalist who deviates from an agreed-upon narrative.

10) Support powerful people who want to trash free speech and libel protections. But not too much. We may need those things if we get in legal trouble.

Fox, which I have written about before, is not a bad, dangerous news organization. It’s not even a news organization. It’s a political propaganda network. The current litigation against it is a rare case in which to root against the media.

Big, unanswered questions don’t have a statute of limitations

ALABAMA BASKETBALL PLAYERS MARK SEARS (LEFT) AND BRANDON MILLER ANSWER MEDIA QUESTIONS FOLLOWING A GAME IN OCTOBER 2022.

After Alabama basketball player Darius Miles was charged with capital murder, coach Nate Oats called NFL Hall of Famer Ray Lewis for advice. I don’t know what Lewis might have told Oats beyond what has been reported, but he might have said: “The damn news media will never let it go.”

Lewis should know. In 2000 the Baltimore Ravens linebacker was charged with murder in connection with the stabbing deaths of two men in Atlanta. Lewis ended up pleading guilty to obstruction of justice. But Lewis never fully accounted publicly for his actions that night.

So a Sports Illustrated reporter new to the NFL beat decided to go into the locker room and give Lewis a chance to do so. Thirteen years later. Unsurprisingly, Lewis got angry. The reporter got blacklisted by Lewis’ teammates, chewed out by the Ravens’ media relations staff, and threatened with loss of access to the locker room.

Well, so what. Can’t chicken out of asking questions that need to be asked just because someone will get angry. And the time lag? That, according to a 2018 retrospective article by the SI reporter, Robert Klemko, was the fault of Lewis and the Ravens for making sure reporters never got access to Lewis in anything other than a controlled forum.

Moving to present day, the University of Alabama has granted the news media zero access to players since the revelation in court that two other players, star Brandon Miller and Jaden Bradley, were at the scene of the fatal shooting of Jamea Jonae Harris on Jan. 15. Both players have continued to play.

If I’m a UA administrator, in the current fraught circumstances, I probably wouldn’t want a press availability, either. But that doesn’t change the professional and moral necessity for the news media to seek a complete and truthful account of events that night. The victim deserves that, and it’s the only way to fairly judge the actions of the university.

It’s a great PR tactic to stonewall and then later claim mootness because of the passage of time. The media can’t let that tactic work.

It will be interesting to see if the media opportunities required by the SEC and NCAA men’s basketball tournaments lead to interviews with Miller. (Certainly UA has had plenty of time to coach Miller and everyone else on what to say.)

No matter how many media relations people get mad, or how bad it will look to fans, someone someday has to ask, “Brandon, did you know the gun was in the car?” He doesn’t have to answer that or any of the several other unanswered questions about the tragedy. But the media have to try. And it doesn’t matter what year it is.

I'm failing to get outraged about the death of The Birmingham News

Gonna make this short because, as grateful as I am for every wonderful person who has ever read an Arenblog post, I write primarily for my students and I can assure you they don’t give a sheet* about the end of newspapers in three of Alabama’s largest cities.

Today marked the end of The Huntsville Times, The Mobile Press-Register and The Birmingham News, for which I busted my tail for 30 years and in which I took enormous pride (on its good days, anyway). 

Certainly, I am saddened. It’s not merely the end of a print version of The Birmingham News. It’s the end of The Birmingham News. There isn’t a Birmingham News website. It’s al.com with the option of a Birmingham-focused homepage. The Alabama Media Group’s daily paid digital product is called The Lede. It still says it’s “From The Birmingham News” but that’s not really so anymore. The bylines don’t say “Birmingham News.”

It’s possible to be sad and accepting at the same time, of course. Eventual death, I think, is the fate that awaits all daily newspapers, though no one can predict when. Certainly, many other newspaper companies continue to make money (albeit less and less) from their print editions. AMG’s parent Advance Local still has newspapers in other states. But AMG had an uncommon situation because its state and local print stories in Birmingham, Huntsville and Mobile had already appeared on its free and heavily trafficked website. 

Throughout journalism history, methods of delivering news have come and gone. For instance: flyers, Pony Express and telegraph. Digital platforms ripped apart the traditional business model of print (though print readership began to decline before the internet became widespread). Print was nice because it delivered a common set of facts as the starting point for community debate and action. But digital platforms, for all their bazillion faults, are so much better: More immediacy, more options, more effective ways to present journalism.

What matters for news in Alabama going forward is its quality, and that has little to do with how it’s delivered.

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* A “sheet” is a printing press term.

ChatGPT is really cool, but yeah, it’s also cheating

It’s quite fashionable to be the progressive educator who embraces the latest new technology for teaching in college classrooms. I’m that sort, of course. For example: I no longer grade assignments on paper.

The introduction a few months ago of the artificial intelligence program ChatGPT has divided college educators, some of whom welcome it as a teaching tool and student resource and others who see it as the doom of writing assignments and an invitation for academic misconduct. Some universities have taken steps to limit its use by students.

Students can go online to the ChatGPT website, enter a prompt or question (such as one that matches the subject of a writing assignment), and receive a fully written, AI-generated answer. It’s amazing and alarming at the same time.

I tried a few tests and, yes, it produces an acceptable essay free of writing errors. It wouldn’t get a student on the Dean’s List.

I teach a media ethics course and ChatGPT’s answer to my request for an analysis of whether journalists should use confidential sources offered persuasive points on both sides (without endorsing either side). I asked for a longer analysis and it fulfilled the task with some additional valid points but also with repetition and hot air. When I asked for five famous examples of reporters using confidential sources, ChatGPT delivered accurately.

However, when I asked for the same analysis using the reasoning model contained in our ethics course textbook, it bombed. It claimed it was using that model, but it produced nothing from the book.

Educators have freaked out about technological advancements before. Everyone was sure the advent of the calculator would destroy math skills. It didn’t. Everyone was sure the website Grammarly and similar spellcheck programs would make writers lazy and dependent. They haven’t. But we’ve never had a tool that can instantly generate a whole piece of cogent writing for free.

That kind of use is educationally defeating. The process of writing – developing, organizing and expressing thoughts -- is fundamental to learning. To go further, use of ChatGPT for writing is academic misconduct because it’s not original work.

I can, however, see acceptable uses of this new tech, such as using it to review course material prior to an exam. I asked ChatGPT to explain some ethics terminology – what a stereotype is, for instance – and it nailed it. Nothing wrong with that.

I also would sign off on engaging ChatGPT to locate examples, citations and other aspects of research. Because I don’t think there’s a huge difference between that and, say, a Google search.

this is chatgpt’s response to a prompt i entered on the website

Teachers have nothing to worry about if students aren’t considering use of ChatGPT.  According to a study by test prep company Study.com (linked story written by my former student Micah Ward for University Business), 90% of the 1,000 U.S. students surveyed knew of ChatGPT and 53% reported using it to write an essay. Two-thirds of respondents supported student access to it. Almost three-fourths of the 100 college professors surveyed said they worried about the potential for cheating.

Those student numbers seemed awfully high. So I surveyed one of my classes (foolproof method). Only 14 of 32 students said they were familiar with ChatGPT. I asked how many knew of a student who had used ChatGPT to write a college assignment. One.

There are some reasons why I believe this likely won’t turn into an epidemic. First, I do not believe students cheat as much as Study.com and plagiarism detection companies claim. (Cue scandal that will make me look like a fool for saying that.)

Also, it’s possible to determine when students use it. OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, announced its own detection software in January, though it lacks reliability. Turnitin, the plagiarism detection software used at UA and elsewhere, said in December that it will enhance its ability to spot AI-generated writing, including ChatGPT, this year. And, of course, professors can enter queries that match an assignment and compare similarities.

Finally, there’s the problem of ChatGPT’s inaccuracies and knowledge gaps, like the reasoning model in the ethics course textbook that’s a mandatory part of that course’s writing assignments. And, particular to my department, ChatGPT can’t produce the original reporting that journalism assignments require.

Speaking of knowledge gaps, I asked Chat GPT if it knew what The Arenblog is. It didn’t. What a fraud.

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Sometimes you shouldn’t stay out of the story

brandi smith of khou-tv in houston flags down a rescue boat while reporting on hurricane harvey in 2017.

In late December, a reporter for the Bend (Oregon) Bulletin who was assigned to report on dangerously cold weather wrote a first-person account of his decision to summon help for a shivering woman living in a tent. He feared she might not survive the night. Compassionate and heroic, is it not?

Apparently not, because he got torn to shreds on Twitter – so much so that the next day he posted that he was taking a break from the “unrelenting hatred” on the platform.

I commend the good Samaritan act and I appreciate whenever someone initiates discussion of good ethical practices in journalism, which is what the reporter’s account did. (It’s also what The Arenblog sometimes tries to do.) But like others, I didn’t care for the piece. At all.

That was not because the reporter chose to get involved in the story he was covering. It was, partly, because of the “Hey, look at me” quality to his decision to go public. And it was, primarily, because he framed his actions as contrary to the journalistic principle to never get involved. “There is a well-established ethical rule among journalists that, no matter how bad things get, you don’t do anything that could impact the story,” he wrote.

No, not really.

Certainly, journalists must avoid involvements that create conflicts of interest or cast questions about their fairness or neutrality. But in matters of immediate life or death, or immediate health and safety, I don’t interpret any creeds of journalism as preventing action by a reporter.

It has happened many times, usually when a natural disaster hits. When Hurricane Harvey struck Houston in 2017, for instance, a local TV reporter doing a live broadcast spotted a truck driver trapped in the cab as it filled with water. She ran to flag down a rescue boat. Also during Harvey, a CNN reporter missed a scheduled live shot because he and his crew ran to save a driver who drove into a flooded ravine moments before the standup. The episode ended with the driver thanking the crew on national live TV.

In his story, the Oregon reporter cited two “horror stories” of journalists supposedly not acting to save a person from harm. One involved an Alabama TV news crew that “sat back” while a Jacksonville man set himself on fire to protest unemployment in America in 1983. But according to an article in the online United Press International archives, the crew from WHMA-TV did try to stop him.

bryce dole is a reporter for the bend (oregon) bulletin. he did the right thing.

The writer’s second example is famous: A photographer who won a Pulitzer Prize for a 1993 photo of a little girl who collapsed on her way to a food center during the famine and civil war in Sudan. In the background, a vulture waits for her to die. It’s often overlooked that the photojournalist eventually did chase the bird away, and that he couldn’t help the girl because armed soldiers were present to prevent the press from interfering with circumstances. (The photographer reported that the girl was able to resume her path to the center, where her parents had gone to get in line, but her fate after that remains unknown.)

This is not to say there are no concerns or gray areas when reporters debate whether to step out of their roles as uninvolved witnesses. What about situations that aren’t immediately urgent? Should journalists writing about poverty, for instance, offer money to the people they use to humanize their stories? (I have no problem with that, provided the offer comes after the reporting.)

Writing in 2018 about the famine in Yemen, Declan Walsh of The New York Times raised valid questions about whether it’s ethical to single out some people but not others for help, and whether people looking for assistance might embellish their stories to pull a little harder on the hearts and wallets of foreigners with money. He also asked how much long-term good a one-time gift could possibly do.

In some cases, reporter intervention could mean loss of a worthy story. In 2012, photographer Sara Naomi Lewkowicz was documenting an ex-convict’s attempt to return to normal life when one night he began assaulting his live-in girlfriend. Knowing that someone else had called police, Lewkowicz kept shooting the attack rather than trying to stop it. The result was a rare and blunt look at the awfulness of domestic violence. Letting the events happen produced a public service (and the girlfriend let Lewkowicz continue to follow her life).

Deciding when to stop being a hands-off journalist in adverse circumstances isn’t easy. But doing so is certainly not an automatic violation of the rules.

Damar Hamlin’s horrifying collapse gives some football writers pause

ESPN PHOTO

I’m well aware of the many ways I benefitted in my years as a sports journalist from the popularity of football.  That’s true for all the sports media that report on, and therefore indirectly promote, football at any level.

More readership and ratings. More status and money.

It’s all good until a moment comes along that demands a look in the mirror and an answer to the question “Should I really be doing this?”

I saw some of that in the aftermath of Monday night’s horrifying collapse of Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin seconds after a normal tackle on live national TV.  Emergency medical staff administered CPR and electrical shock while players kneeled and prayed and cried. Fans in the stadium hushed.

Stephen Holder of ESPN tweeted the next morning: “I’ve been covering football forever and the NFL, specifically, for 18 seasons. Every once in a while, there’s a moment so terrifying that it creates complicated feelings for me about what I do for a living. Last night was one of those moments.” In response to a reader comment, he added: “I love football. That won’t change.”

No doubt many writers who make a living from this enjoyable but dangerously physical sport share those complicated feelings right now.

“It’s often difficult for me to reconcile this business and this sport with real life and humanity,” tweeted Gregg Bell, who covers the Seattle Seahawks for the Tacoma News Tribune (and was a great guest speaker to the Tuscaloosa chapter of the Associated Press Sports Editors last year). In a podcast with a Seattle radio station, he said the possibility that an athlete might have died as a result of a hit in a game “shook us to the core.”

The sport creates multiple episodes of trauma every season on every level, though not necessarily with the same potential life-or-death consequences as Monday night. See, for instance, the two concussions – that means a brain injury – sustained by former UA and current Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa within three months of each other this season.

But it’s not just the obvious, catastrophic collisions that raise questions about the safeness of football. A growing volume of research indicates that an accumulation of sub-concussive hits – that means routine contact – can cause brain damage that slowly shows itself in later years.

Decision-makers in the sport have made many changes to rules and equipment to try to make the game safer. And players understand the risks. But for people who see the big picture, such as sports journalists, that doesn’t remove the question of whether they should give attention and promotion to a sport of such great potential harm to its participants – all for the sake of profit and entertainment.

“Honestly? This is the Faustian bargain every one of us who watches/writes about/talks about football has made for a long time,” tweeted St. Bonaventure journalism professor Brian Moritz while Hamlin was being resuscitated. A Faustian bargain means sacrificing a moral value for a material gain. (Moritz writes a very good sports journalism blog, by the way.)

In 2017, one sports journalist decided he wasn’t going to accept that bargain anymore.

Ed Cunningham, a former NFL player who was a college football analyst for ESPN, quit the job because he said he could no longer play his supporting role for a sport that was injuring or gradually killing some of its players, including some former teammates. “I just don’t think the game is safe for the brain,” he told the New York Times. “To me, it’s unacceptable.”

Football reporters in recent years have embraced a good but less drastic action: Including stories about the sport’s dangers as part of their overall coverage. It is common to see reports about injury protocol compliance, or the latest neurology research, or the deteriorating life of a former player. Some advocate for new safety measures, too.

As excellent as that is, there’s not much time or space in the media for the viewpoint – a minority viewpoint, for sure – that the game needs fundamental change. Every sport carries risks, of course, but only a few – football and boxing, for instance – build dangerous physical contact into their essence.

Calls for less tackle football and more flag football are understandably focused on levels before high school. I don’t think participants, fans or the sports media would entertain anything more radical, because that would mess with a whole lot of golden geese.

I and many others will watch the games as usual this weekend and next Monday, and reporters will cover them. In the wake of this Monday’s harrowing events, none of that will be as easy as it once was.