Is the media ignorant or intentionally misrepresenting facts about UFC?
Published by Zach Arnold on May 14th, 2009 in Current Events

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ESPN’s E:60 video profile of Dana White, which aired last Tuesday, was being heralded by ESPN PR staffers as being one of the most controversial media segments ever done on UFC President Dana White. For weeks, we had been led to believe (including Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter) that we were going to see a confrontation between interviewer Tom Farrey and Dana White at UFC 97 in Montreal. PR staffers gave MMA sites a week’s notice in advance of what was coming up on the show and, in the end, the E:60 segment was nothing more than the typical boilerplate mainstream media piece that you’ve seen done on UFC in the past.

Long-time MMA fans have come to understand that when it comes to the myths and lies perpetuated by UFC in the mainstream media that we need to have a strong stomach to tolerate the garbage that has to be digested.

The focus of this article is not about Dana White, nor is it about UFC management or anyone associated with the company who continues to pitch lies, myth, and propaganda about the organization in order to make it look like a bigger deal than it really is. Dana White is a front man and the UFC’s version of Billy Mays without the colored beard. What this article will focus on, however, is the complete lack of credibility ESPN has developed in terms of covering the current MMA scene.

I am not an ESPN hater. I am not one of the many sports bloggers who constantly screams “Death to ESPN!” but secretly wishes to be on their payroll. I am the typical ESPN consumer — I watch the network for a few hours a day and enjoy most of the network’s programming. For the most part, ESPN has very good reporters and breaks a lot of legitimate news stories. However, if you compare the network’s track record in accurately covering MMA as opposed to the other sports they cover, you will see a wide credibility gap.

By now, you know what the main UFC talking points are and how easily they are to debunk. The most notorious claim is that Dana White implemented the Unified Rules in MMA and cleaned up the business, which is completely false. Then there are claims that Dana White himself came up with The Ultimate Fighter concept — a claim that Dave Meltzer in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter disputes. There are other claims made by the mainstream media covering White that make him out to be such a badass that White has earned the notorious nickname online of BLAF (“Built Like a Fighter.”) More on this later in the article.

We’ve seen CBS and CNBC and other big networks portray UFC in a manner which isn’t entirely true. And every time we watch these shows, it becomes more and more painful to watch the media profiles of White and UFC management. Again, that’s not the fault of UFC — they’re doing their job, but the media isn’t doing its job in telling the complete story. Unfortunately, ESPN has been one of the biggest culprits of journalistic malpractice in terms of covering the full picture on who Dana White is and how he operates.

The E:60 profile piece on Dana White, which is available on ESPN’s Youtube channel, was a credibility breaker in the eyes of many writers and fans who are dedicated followers of the sport of MMA. Dave Meltzer in the May 14th, 2009 edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter put it this way:

“But what totally killed me about the piece was them saying that (Dana) White changed the sport by implementing rules and weight classes. This is ESPN E:60 that worked on this story for months and they made that elementary mistake. This isn’t some local sports reporter who has to do a story in one day and relies on googling for incorrect info and didn’t call anyone who knows anything. Some people will think that’s minor, but that is simply not a mistake that kind of an agency can make in 2009, to fall for the 2006 line of crap. Even if the piece had overall been insightful and had broken some ground, that mistake making the piece killed it for me.”

In addition to ESPN’s E:60 piece on UFC, the network’s own internet show MMA Live has the affable Kenny Florian each week. The show, for the most parts, plays it down the middle but certainly has more of a pro-UFC stance and is granted access to go to UFC shows to do taped remotes.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=4157485&type=story

In the latest edition of ESPN the Magazine, writer Michael Woods has an ‘inside access’ piece with Dana White where he shadowed him for a few days last year (around mid-July 2008 when UFC counterprogrammed Affliction’s debut MMA show with Anderson Silva vs. James Irvin on Spike TV.) At times, Woods’ article on White almost read like a parody of the mainstream media’s coverage of UFC.

Woods claims that when Dana White took over UFC in 2001, ‘the sport was gasping.’ That is an entirely false statement. If anything, MMA was starting to boom in Japan with PRIDE, Antonio Inoki, and K-1 working together. It would be a year later on August 28th, 2002 at Kokuritsu Stadium in Tokyo where promoters would draw over 70,000 fans for Dynamite!! featuring Bob Sapp vs. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.

As we mentioned earlier in this column, Dana White is often known as BLAF (Built Like a Fighter) online because of his persona as a tough man who is one of the boys and once did a fitness magazine cover (while challenging Tito Ortiz to an exhibition fight). In his ESPN the Magazine piece, Woods wrote, “White is respected in the fight world because he’s a former fighter and looks like one.”

If that wasn’t enough for you, Woods intimated that “White wondered what it could be if it were marketed as a real sport governed by real rules — you know, no hair pulling or crotch shots — with fighters promoted WWE-style.” Nowhere in Woods’ piece was there mention of the role of the New Jersey state athletic control board or the role that Quebec played in the way the Unified Rules of MMA were shaped. Nope. Instead, the myth that Dana White cleaned up the sport and made it legitimate continues.

In response to a column I wrote on May 13th with my initial thoughts on ESPN’s E:60 video profile of Dana White, attorney and MMA Fighter’s Association leader Rob Maysey responded to my comments with the following note:

” I was taught, early on, never assume ignorance. If something seems incredible, there is likely a reason – keep looking. More often than not, in the legal world, this is very sound advice. That said, let’s call a spade a spade at this point. These oversights can no longer be chalked up to lack of preparation or ignorance – call it what it all evidence indicates – despite what we do not care to believe, intentional acts.”

Maysey is not the first person to implicate UFC in applying pressure on media outlets to cover their organization in a certain way or to indicate that the media is playing it soft in an attempt to cash in later on the sport (ESPN would be a prime target for MMA programming in the future).

The loudest mainstream media criticism of UFC’s policy in the way they deal with the media and the way the media reacts back to their behavior came from LA Times Las Vegas writer Richard Abowitz, who wrote a column about the credentials process he had to go through to get access to UFC’s May 2008 event (Sean Sherk vs. BJ Penn).

http://vegasblog.latimes.com/vegas/2008/05/ultimate-fighti.html

“One local journalist who covered Saturday’s Ultimate Fighting Championship card at MGM’s Grand Garden Arena wrote me an e-mail, offering this impression: “UFC attempts to be more controlling than other sports. UFC sounds like it’s trying to hem in media.”

“Interestingly, in another e-mail, (UFC events manager Diann) Brizzolara also wrote to me defensively that the UFC credential application was “actually reviewed by our COO (who also has a law degree).” Huh? Who is the COO’s client: UFC or media?

Credential applications are supposed to be basic as they are designed to confirm only the legitimacy and assignment of media to an event. The standard application answers two questions: is this writer a legitimate journalist and does the writer have an assignment? Since it is an application and not a contract, it is therefore revealing that UFC felt the need to have this routine document examined by a COO with a law degree.”

Everyone reading this column understand what UFC’s track record with dealing with the media is like. They are looking for big mainstream media outlets to cover their shows and they are also looking for the best press possible amongst certain MMA web sites, but for the most part the web sites that cover the sport objectively are not getting credentialed to the shows.

With all of that said, most media outlets that are getting credentialed to cover MMA events generally are not telling the full story about the sport’s politics or behind-the-scenes happenings. Whether that’s due to pressure from UFC or financial obligations or other motivations, it is pretty accurate to say that UFC enjoys relatively tame media coverage while other sports with incidents similar to what Dana White has had to face in the past (labor relations, media tirades) would get roasted by the likes of Jay Mariotti and Kevin Blackistone.

Even if UFC is attempting to control what the media says or doesn’t say about them in exchange for access, the fact remains that the media that does cover UFC should know what is truth and what is fiction. Journalistic integrity should not be sacrificed in the name of media access only. We all know that it is UFC’s job to put the best face forward for the company and to say as much BS as possible to look good, but it’s also the job of the media to refute the myths being told and to tell the public the truth. The fact that media outlets aren’t willing to do the right thing or take a stand in regards to their coverage of UFC shows a lack of integrity and, more importantly, a lack of a backbone. You don’t need to go to J-School at Northwestern, Missouri, or Columbia to understand that point, either.