Habs Week in Review
Noam Chomsky called sports, or more pointedly, spectator sports as “Irrational Jingoism”. When Chomsky was in high school he came to the conclusion that his high school’s football team’s winning record had no bearing whatsoever on his life.
Chomsky also felt that our press was not free. He feels that various filters, 5 in fact, impede the flow of a free press. See Manufacturing Consent for more on this. Heading back to last week when the entire Kovalev affair hit the press, both of these statements by Chomsky came to mind.
LaPresse was lambasted during the week by readers and the screws turned on them by Les Canadiens. As I alluded to in last week’s post, Les Canadiens control the sports media. They do so by having a legion of journalists and commentators that they can count on to produce comments in the paper that are favorable to their position. They wield this control by choosing which players are available for comments and how often. What makes one journalist more successful then another is often the access he gets to certain players.
The entire team played a massive game of denial and circled in among themselves to help blow this story over. In the end, they were very successful. The story is dead. But what I took away from the entire affair is how incredibly unfree sports journalism is. How the guys working the beat are at the complete mercy of the team they follow. How if a paper steps out of line from the official line how a legion of writers descend upon that paper for having the nerve to actually write something that approaches real journalism.
The Habs are now in 11nth and will have to play like Gods to make the playoffs.
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