The Bonds That Tries My Patience

I just finished watching an ESPN broadcast where Peter Gammons, Tim Kurkjian, and several other sportswriters debated whether slugger Barry Bonds deserves to make it into the Baseball Hall of Fame. And I realized what makes me uncomfortable with the Barry Bonds situation: The fact that journalists can actually decide the answer to that question.

Baseball writers are the ones who cast ballots for the hall of fame. This fact baffles me. These are the people who are assigned to cover baseball as a professional reporters; a profession with hallmarks of objectivity, distance and contemplation.

None of those hallmarks is action. In the case of sportswriters, that action is voting.

Many journalists, myself included, do not vote in elections, participate in political activities, march, protest, work on behalf of a partisan group or generally do anything that conveys the impression they maintain a bias.

The sheer fact that journalists vote for the hall of fame puts them in a position inherently at odds with the profession they are paid to do: namely, remain objective observers, above the fray.

Perhaps this point stuck out to me because I was flipping back and forth between C-SPAN and Sportscenter. But the logical similarity is crystal clear in my mind. The difference between a politician and journalist at its core is this: Politicians use argument to justify their actions. Journalists’ arguments by design have no more bite than the insights they carry.

Gammons and crew — discussing why they may vote for Bonds — struck me as grandstanding. Why? They are the actual decision makers, not mere influencers. A journalist should make an argument based on its own merits, not to justify a conclusion.

That’s not to say the writers were wrong to argue about it. The problem is their arguments have real teeth — in this case voting to decide on whether Bonds is admitted to the hall of fame. It’s something wholly unjournalistic.

How can a reporter critique something unobjectively when it’s his own opinion he tries to influence? This is far more akin to propaganda than reporting.

If I ever become a sportswriter, count me out on voting. But I will definitely argue until I am blue in the face.