MMA Journalism Roundtable: Media Hype vs. Media Spin

Once again, welcome to the third of a ten-part series on the most pressing and thought-provoking questions regarding MMA media. I ask the hard questions, Jim Murphy of the Savage Science, Zak Woods of SB Nation and Watch Kalib Run and MMA Opinion’s very own Joshua Stein provide the answers. Today we’ll be discussing media hype versus media spin… please leave your own thoughts in the comments section!

Almost every interviewer has been guilty of trying to build hype before a fight. This can be something as simple as persistent questioning or spinning questions a certain way. Or it can be cutting off part of a quote to make it seem like it’s about something different… This is a lot worse in video, when large chunks are simply edited out and quotes used out of context (with visuals unrelated to what the interviewee was original talking about). How do you define the fine line between manipulating responses to “sell” a piece or just doing your job?

Read the answers after the jump!

Zak Woods:

The manipulation of content is definitely a slippery slope. However the internet has created an environment that is dependent upon readership that is now quantifiable in a way newspapers never were. For instance just because my magazine has 100,000 subscribers doesn’t mean that 100,000 people are reading my article. With the internet and the subsequent data tracking software we can quantifiably see how many visitors and views we are getting. In such an environment it becomes necessary to sell your product. In this case our interview or writing. However the acknowledgment of such an environment shouldn’t give carte-blanche to write over-the-top and misleading headlines in the name of more viewer ship. That path will ultimately lead to the loss of credibility which is vital to be a good online source of information.

I’ve never understood what’s wrong with trying to sell a fight. If it’s a good fight, I’m happy to push it on people. If it’s a crappy fight, I see it as an obligation to call out the organization on the issue.

I see “selling” fights as a part of my job. Expertise (and if it sounds concieted to call myself an expert, it’s only because other people treat me like one; whether I am or not is debatable) is about picking out the products that are good and helping them succeed, so that they can continue to do well in the marketplace, and trying to get all of the crap that’s on the market out.

Part of that is self interest. I want better fights, and if I can get the people who read my site to get excited about good fights (and not just what the mainstream media tries to sell, or what the promoters are hocking), then there will be more quality events for me.

Jim Murphy:

(ed. note to readers: the following was written before the latest Affliction debaucle)

“Affliction could sell out the Honda Center and do a great PPV buyrate.  They could put on the card of the year, headlined by an all time classic battle between Fedor and Chuck Norris.  They could bring Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix back from the dead, and have Nirvana and Hendrix provide the musical entertainment.  Tom Atencio could come out at intermission and inform the crowd that he’s discovered the cure for cancer in his spare time.  And the writer in question would report….

AFFLICTION SHOW DISAPPOINTS, FUTURE IN DOUBT

Again, we’re not talking about giving a promotion a free pass.  We’re talking about covering them all with an objective set of criteria.  The writer in question above before both Affliction shows has made a big deal about how he was able to get three or four seats together and this means that the attendance will be poor.  And yet for both cards the Honda Center was full or close to it.  Now if he did the same thing for the UFC I wouldn’t have a problem with it, but he doesn’t.  No one reported on the disappointing crowd that attended the UFC event in Atlanta—it didn’t take a Mike Wallace investigative job.  Just pull up the Phillips Arena website, look at the UFCs attendance numbers and the building was just under three quarters full.  That wasn’t reported. The UFC put a positive spin on it, talking about how it set an all time record gate.  I have no issue with them doing that, because that’s their job to put the best spin forward.  Of course when you sell tickets that are 10 times the usual price structure in a building that’s been open 7 or 8 years that’s not as impressive as it sounds.  Again, we’re not trying to play ‘gotcha’ with the UFC but we’d like to see less of a transparent double standard—one for Zuffa, and one for everyone else.  In my view, however, a UFC event that doesn’t sell out with Chuck Liddell on top in their first appearance in a city is a pretty compelling story.

As far as specific fight promotion goes, we respect our audience enough to assume that they ‘get’ the deal with hyping a fight.  Any fight fan should know to take what fighters and promoters say to sell tickets or PPVs with a grain of salt.  So if Fighter A says that he ‘wants to kill’ Fighter B at a prefight press conference, I don’t see much issue with reporting on that quote without some sort of analysis that he may be psychologically unglued.  Again, there’s a lot of situational components to this but assuming that you’re not trying to pump one company and bury another reporting on a fight’s ‘storylines’ are just part and parcel of selling the sport.

This isn’t to say that fighters can’t ‘cross the line’ in promoting a fight and that we should give them a pass when they do.  Still, it’s a very complex concept and you can’t have a hard and fast rule.  Best current example is Brock Lesnar—I’m very conflicted over Lesnar, his post UFC 100 antics and his impact on the sport.  On one level, there’s a lot of hypocrisy in condemning him and a lot of that is based in his background in pro wrestling.  A common take is that ‘Lesnar is bringing WWE antics to MMA’.  The problem with that is that it displays ignorance to the long relationship between MMA in the US and particularly in Japan.  There are at least three UFC Hall of Famers that spent a considerable chunk of time in pro wrestling (Dan Severn, Ken Shamrock, Mark Coleman).  Shamrock wrestled under the name ‘Vince Torrelli’ long before he came to the UFC and was a big star in the WWE.  Severn is a former NWA Champion and the only man to simultaneously hold a pro wrestling heavyweight title and a MMA title.  Coleman did most of his wrestling in Japan.  So over 40% of the UFC Hall of Fame has a pro wrestling background and Lesnar is disgracing the sport?  That’s a tough sell.  It also neglects the countless other fighters that have been ‘over the top’ in their persona.  Tito Ortiz with his ‘gravediger’ antics and opponent insulting t-shirts.  Frank Shamrock.  Even Royce Gracie had what wrestling fans would call an ‘arrogant heel’ persona way back in the first UFCs.

On another level, his behavior *was* unsportsmanlike and pro forma it’s something we don’t like to see in fight sports.  The next question is how much of that is what wrestling fans call a ‘work’ and how much is really his personality?  That’s a good question but one that only he could answer—and if he’s ‘working’ to hype fights you’re not going to get a straight answer.  When I was doing the UFC 100 play by play I condemned his unsportsmanlike antics but immediately offered the caveat that he’d just added 250,000 PPV buys to his next fight.  After seeing the furor it created in the mainstream sports media, that number is way low.

Ultimately, it all comes back to the fact that its incumbent upon the fight media to understand that much of this is what fight promoters and fighters do—they promote fights.  They try to create and manipulate storylines to make us want to buy tickets or PPVs.  A lot of this is part of the ‘show’ and to ignore that is like panning a sci-fi movie because the spaceships and robots aren’t real.  Beyond that, it’s a complex issue that you just can’t set a hard and fast guideline for what is ‘acceptable’ and what isn’t.

Readers: What are your thoughts? Please post them in the comments section.