More Media Failure on Israeli Crimes & Racism in MMA
No small amount of this newsletter’s commentary touches in some form or another on media studies/criticism. That is to say, this 15-year journalism veteran likes to spend lots of space discussing how we in journalism can and should do better.
Missiles Without a Source
This morning two stark examples pop into my mind with ease. Israel has just bombed the Al-Jalaa tower in Gaza, destroying the offices of several media outlets as well as the homes of many people. This is a blatant and literal attack on press freedom by the US’ client-state Israel, for certain, and that violence is compounded by the way outlets are covering it.
No sooner had Israel destroyed the Associated Press’ and others’ offices in Gaza than fellow international newswire Reuters began reporting on it in a propagandized manner that occludes who committed the attacks. “Gaza tower, housing AP, Al Jazeera collapses after missile strike - witness” The missile strike was rendered an orphan grammatically by Reuters’ strained headline.
Who fired the missile strike? The Reuters headline doesn’t tell us.
The collapse of the building is even separated from the missile strike. In this headline it isn’t the case that “Israeli government destroys building housing international press outlets with missile strike,” it is, however, the case according to the goofy headline that a building somehow eventually collapsed after, but not necessarily directly or solely due to, being struck by missiles from a source that goes unnamed.
That’s headline writing so bad that it can’t be accidental. When international outlets cannot even report on their colleagues’ offices being destroyed by government missile strikes without attempting to occlude the culpability of the government who executed the strikes, we’re in a propaganda danger-zone.
More Polite Racism from MMA Media
I’ve noticed more than a few of my colleagues eagerly picking up on an official line heading into this weekend’s UFC event featuring a lightweight fight that is somehow for a world championship between two great athletes Charles Oliveira and Michael Chandler. The line goes something like this, with personal variation and anecdotes to give it flavor - Mike Chandler sure is a nice guy. He always has been. I’m so happy for him getting this title shot. He deserves it.
I don’t have a quibble with any of those things, in and of themselves. In my extremely limited and brief personal contact with him years ago I found Chandler to be down-to-earth and friendly.
He has also only recently gotten a chance to fight on the biggest stage in the UFC after a long and successful international fight career in other organizations like Bellator, so his fans must be especially gratified that he’s finally able to show his ability to a larger audience. All that is fine.
Mike is friendly, Mike is a great fighter, I like watching Mike fight, any and all of that can be true. The thing is that none of it matters all that much in comparison to Chandler’s support for some of the most awful, blatantly racist politicians and policies in the world.
Chandler, like millions of others, decided to support Donald Trump for President of the United States after Trump launched his campaign on the bedrock of vilifying and calling for the ethnic cleansing of Muslims, and on demonizing Mexican people. That was all, of course, on top of decades of Trump’s anti-Black racism that included discriminating against Black tenants, calling for the execution of Black boys for crimes they did not commit, even years after they were exonerated, spearheading false conspiracy theories about Barack Obama not being a real American, and a whole lot else.
Trump’s lifelong commitment to racism and racist policies are why organizations like the Klu Klux Klan decided to officially endorse him. I don’t know why Michael Chandler, who has a Black son he and his wife adopted, decided to support and follow Donald Trump, but the fact that he agreed with the KKK on who should run the nation sure was enough for me to stop caring about him being an interpersonally “nice” guy.
Also, an athlete metaphorically joining hands with the KKK to support a politician will always be a bigger and more important story than any of their games, matches, or fights. Always.
The overwhelmingly White MMA media press corps doesn’t seem to agree, however, and has devoted virtually no attention to Chandler’s problematic support of racists and racist policies. Instead, they talk about what a nice guy he is and how he deserves everything he’s getting.
I guess a fighter supporting a KKK-endorsed politician just doesn’t hit a White reporter the same way it hits us non-White ones. That makes sense, but a little professional effort at empathy would still be nice.
A little effort and self-awareness would have also been nice with coverage of another UFC athlete who competes tonight, Katelyn Chookagian, and her years of racist tweets. The fan detective work on Chookagian began earlier this week when people began pointing out that a lot of the twitter posts she’d been “liking” on the application in recent days and months were sexually pornographic, and almost exclusively featured Black men.
Many just laughed at the thought of the fighter watching lots of porn while preparing to fight and while cutting weight. Evidently other fans decided to see if there was anything more to this pattern of Chookagian apparently obsessively sexually fetishizing Black men’s bodies because they found racist tweets from the athlete going back years.
As it turns out, Chookagian’s twitter account doesn’t just have a pattern sexually fetishizing Black men’s bodies, but also of using the word “nigger,” and making fun of Asian people’s eyes. Just like in Chandler’s case, this matters a whole lot more than anything Chookagian will ever do in a ring, tonight or any night, and her years-long pattern of racism needs to be front-and-center in discussing her this weekend as she fights and as reporters question her before and after her bout.
Sexually fetishizing Black bodies is racism. Making “jokes” about Asian people’s eyes is racism.
We all have to fight racist ideology in ourselves and in society, and make no mistake about it - Chookagian has made plain her own racist thinking. It’s bad enough that us reporters weren’t the ones to notice her years of public racist behavior, but some of my colleagues are now going so far as to criticize the fans who brought it all to light - wondering without any particular evidence if Chookagian has been “hacked,” I guess for years, and that is what might explain her twitter behavior.
In other instances I’ve seen professional journalists deride fans for taking the time to cull through Chookagian’s public statements and saying that they themselves don’t have the time to do that. This is a bizarre and inappropriate response from professional journalists.
Looking at a pattern of behavior from a public figure & digging deeper to see if there's more to it that is problematic (ie. seeing that Chookagian's account demonstrated obsessive sexual fetishization of Black men) is what journalists should do. The fact that fans did it before us is telling.
Journalists bashing fans for doing the work we should have is inexcusable.