From today's home page:
A NEWSPAPER HATCHET JOB 08/23/03 - Stephen Nover
Did you happen to see the front page cover story in Friday's USA Today newspaper titled, "Online Sports Betting Spins Out of Control"?
The writer, Tom Weir, followed the usual steps the mainstream media always seems to take when writing about sports gambling.
There was the obligatory sob story lead about a compulsive bettor losing all his tuition money.
Then there was the typical anti-sports betting quote from Arnie Wexler, who runs a national hotline for problem gamblers.
"Internet gambling is probably the most dangerous thing we've got going at this time," Wexler said in the article.
So Internet gambling is more dangerous than terrorists, drugs and firearms? Is there some rule that anybody who writes about sports betting has to quote Wexler?
Every time a national publication attempts to write about this area, the entry of Wexler and NCAA director of gambling activities Bill Saum is quoted.
You have to wonder if Weir's piece was agenda driven. Certainly, it was far from being impartial. There were surveys and studies listed in the article saying young computer users have an increased risk of becoming problem gamblers and that college students (including athletes) bet on sports via the Internet.
No surveys were mentioned showing that 95 percent of the people who gamble on the Internet do it for entertainment purposes and have no addiction problems at all.
Weir quotes not only Wexler and Saum in the article, but also six other people who are anti-betting, including politicians Jon Kyl and Jim Leach. The only people Weir quotes presenting the other viewpoint are MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman and Mark Blandford, founder of Sportingbet.
Is this balanced and fair reporting? It just wouldn't be sensational enough to quote bettors saying they see nothing wrong with betting a few of their entertainment dollars on a football game they plan to watch.
This isn't to say underage betting isn't a growing problem with so many people owning computers, it certainly is. But then the article should report on the latest steps and software being used to prevent such occurrences.
If you're going to talk about addiction and use horror stories to illustrate your point, at least detail the many other forms of addiction, such as smoking, drinking and making 1,400 stupid posts per month on gaming Web sites.
Instead of just quoting archconservatives Kyl and Leach, why not seek out more open-minded politicians to round out the story?
Also, why do these types of stories always run at the beginning of football and during Super Bowl week? It’s doubtful this is just a coincidence.
Perhaps it's unfair to condemn all mainstream publications for this kind of shoddy journalism. USA Today, after all, is the poster child of superficial reporting.
While editorial and advertising are separate departments at reputable newspapers, it's still hypocritical of USA Today to run such an anti-sports gaming story on its front cover while continuing to accept sports service ads from some of the most notorious touts and boiler room operators in the country.
If USA Today wants to do an expose on the sports betting industry, the newspaper should start with itself.
