You may disagree with Jim Trotter on his views. There can be no disagreement that he has true courage.
After being fired by the NFL for daring to question the commissioner twice during Super Bowl press conferences about newsroom diversity and inclusion in the NFL Media newsroom (the case was settled earlier this month), Trotter took a job to at The Athletics. On Tuesday, he made public his frustrations about the extent to which he did so column about Nick Bosa’s recent MAGA hat on the field has been edited.
“Full disclosure, this is the watered down version of the original columnTrotter tweeted. “I was not allowed, IMO, to properly contextualize the meaning and implications of the moment because I was told I would be violating the NYT’s journalistic standards regarding sports and political commentary. But that’s a discussion for another day.”
The New York Times has issued a tomato/tomahto statement to AwfulAnnouncing.com, explaining that the Times had nothing to do with the editorial decisions of the sports website it owns: “The New York Times standards played no role in this process. The story went through the normal editing process The Athletics. We not discuss publicly our editorial decision-making.”
Trotter, who clarified that the the dilution was done by The Athletics and not the Timeshas publicly discussed the editorial decision-making. People at The Athletics might be annoyed that he did that.
If so: too bad. Let the man speak his mind. He is a columnist. Let him write his column. So what if the column blurs the line between sports and political commentary? Bosa did it first; therefore the issue is relevant.
When athletes choose to make sports political (and they have every right to do so), sports media have an obligation not to shy away from the issue, but to analyze the activity and its consequences.
Trotter’s point is that if the NFL does nothing regarding Bosa blatant violation of the rules in terms of showing political messages, the NFL will have created a double standard with Bosa and Colin Kaepernick, who were shunned for making a statement in a manner that fully complied with the written rules.
In Kaepernick’s case, evidence developed during his collusion complaint showed that the NFL chose to cater to the portion of the fan base that hated Kaepernick for kneeling during the national anthem and ignored a similar percentage of the fan base that supported him. If the NFL remains silent on Bosa, it will once again bow to a vocal minority that responds to legitimate dissent with hatred, insults and threats.
