Opinion: Interviewing drunk fans shouldn’t be a part of Steelers coverage
December 26, 2024I may have just turned 48 years old the other day, but I don’t think I have to be a particular age to say the lead report I saw on TV at 11:00 Christmas night was clearly not professional. I don’t want to give the station call letters away because I’m not sure this is 100% the reporter’s fault and I’m also not sure that it was the only station that aired such a report. (I might be inclined to do so if I was a few years older…)
Granted the Pittsburgh Steelers were trounced by the Kansas City Chiefs with a score of 29-10 on Christmas Day, so maybe the fans who gave up their holiday afternoon to attend the game earned their one drink over the line. Even so I am not interested in seeing people make fools of themselves on the news. In fact, I find it irresponsible on the part of the station/network to broadcast such material.
What I am NOT saying is, “We can’t pretend that people don’t get drunk at football games.” What I AM saying is the rest of us don’t need to see it on TV – even if it isn’t vulgar.
This week, many stations will air public service announcements regarding drinking and driving on New Year’s Eve. How is a report like the one I saw supporting this PSA and the station’s choice to air the announcement? Simple answer: it’s not! I would suspect Patti & Daddy are both rolling in their graves as it were.
While times may be different than they were in the Burns’ era, either in the early or most-recent years thereof, there still needs to be a sense of decorum and responsibility when it comes to filing a report for television regardless of how desperate you are to make a deadline.
Just my 2 cents… your opinion may vary…
Saw the same report repeated on the morning news. The only reason I can think of as to why they chose to air this is to demonstrate that drunk people can by and large be pretty idiotic, and perhaps illustrate by association the inconvenient truth that people get drunk everywhere nowadays. We’re in an era of event and other venues having to facilitate BYOB or other alcohol arrangements to generate interest in potential attendees. When museums have to do it, you know it’s gone too far.
The above message was edited just slighty at the editor’s discretion…
That said, yes… if the reason to air it was to demonstrate people’s idiocy, then it’s not news!
Excellent observation! Fer cripes sakes yinz can go n’ drink beer at da Gian’ Iggle n’at these days.
Agreed. I was quite surprised to see this. Where is the professionalism? The new generation I guess.
Fans have long enjoyed tailgating before the game, but I long ago quit attending Steeler games in-person after it became obvious to me that the crowd entering was already so drunk that the situation was actually dangerous IMO. By the time the crowd is exiting it’s surely a challenge to find the fans who are still sober. The other issue is that local TV news journalists become less and less experienced all the time. The Bob Mayos of the world rush to retire and are replaced by 22-year olds just barely out of college. And I guess that probably extends now to the editor who is deciding what to include in that day’s newscast. So I blame the fact that Pittsburgh is a drinking town with a football problem, along with cost-slashing at local stations.
No, you’re not alone, Eric. I watched the same segment and was appalled. The segment was highly cringeworthy and should never have been aired. More appalling was they came back to the same people later in the segment, like the guy who wanted to get Josh Allen from Buffalo. I’d rather see a segment on people who had to work Wednesday and miss both a religious holiday observance and the Steelers game such as cops, nurses, the Gateway Clipper pilot, et al. At least they had the good sense to put Rabbi Myers on later in the newscast. He should have been among the lead stories. The producers who choose to air the drunkard segments after Steelers home games should be suspended without pay by station management for ‘x’ number of days to send a message to scrap that crap and focus on legitimate news stories.
Eric, you make great points. In the 80s I hosted a show around another team and we would get comments from a local tavern. Yes, people were drinking-and some of the responses were ridiculous. We didn’t use them. It seems to boil down to producer’s choice. Deadlines exist and one person may think it’s “cute” to air a slurring Steelers fan. “Cute” doesn’t make it in these cases. The whole idea would be to “advance the plot” of the story and if it’s over shadowed by the presence of less than educated opinions then that plot is destroyed. You might find a lack of proper supervision and too many jobs assigned to too few people as another ingredient in this less than professional appearance. Paul Long would be incensed at content such as this.