Roger Goodell and The Media

The late summer morning air has turned crisp and the academic life of this town has started all over again.

Fall is still a few days away but in the United States it becomes fall when football starts again.

This year, it certainly seems seems complicated at the NFL level. The Ray Rice saga has taken the front pages by storm.

In this column I want to address the media angle on the story as it relates to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. This is not to accuse or defend him, just to use his case as an example of media coverage in this country.

Before you read any further I want to make this very clear; I believe domestic violence is one of those hidden, silent horrors that lurk in the shadows all around us. It is considered to be an under-reported crime and if that is the case we, as a society, may not have a true grasp on the prevalence of these incidents.

If anything good can come of this saga now engulfing the NFL it is a big platform to create an increased awareness of the issue.

That said, as I mentioned earlier, I want to talk specifically about the media side of this story. Wednesday evening unsubstantiated rumors started to swirl that as far back as April Roger Goodell had seen the tape of Ray Rice punching the woman who is now his wife. To be clear, even if Roger Goodell had seen the tape then he would not be guilty of any crime; bad judgment in suspending Rice for two games maybe, but nothing criminal.

Whether he had seen the tape or not, and despite there being no criminal activity by him, the drumbeat surrounding NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell over the Ray Rice videotape is growing louder. The lightning strikes of the media generally are attracted to the highest object standing. We have seen this movie over and over again.

The Associated Press reported that a law enforcement official sent the Rice video to an NFL executive in April. According to the report, that law enforcement member played a voicemail from a phone number at the NFL office with a female voice.

There is no concrete proof in the article but by the time the story made the rounds, the idea was that essentially Roger Goodell himself had seen the tape. At no time can anyone claim or prove that Roger Goodell ever saw the tape, yet his picture appears at the top of the stories.

Roger Goodell has no role in this criminal matter. The guilty party has been punished by the courts as the courts saw fit. The guilty party has now lost his job. Roger Goodell is no more responsible for Ray Rice’s behavior than an executive of any company is for the behavior of his or her employees when they are away from the office.

He is responsible for NFL discipline and as such he is expected to make statements to society in doling out punishments. Certainly people can agree or disagree with steps he takes, and as the commissioner of the NFL he likely considers public sentiment as he makes those decisions. But getting it wrong as the public sees it is not grounds for dismissal from his job.

In this story, there is an opportunity. Being the NFL Commissioner, Goodell can play a positive role in raising awareness if he is allowed to weather the storm. It remains to be seen if that will happen.

Going back to the AP report I mentioned, Goodell’s name and the NFL name are prominent because they move the social media needle. His picture is put there to imply that the reader will find some culpability in the article. Any proof of his knowledge of the tape just wasn’t there in the article, and that is just bad journalism.

Maybe at some future date we’ll have facts that run counter to what Roger Goodell has stated publicly, maybe not. Until the facts have been established we should certainly be fair and withhold judgment or demands for someone’s job. Isn’t that the way we hope we’d be treated if we were in the same situation?

But none of that may really matters anymore once the forces have been unleashed.

Maybe it is time to ask if we are a nation governed by due process and the rule of law or the rule of virtual mobs that can we whipped up at a moment’s notice? Lately it sure seems like the latter.

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