Why didn't TV networks show angry, booing NFL fans Sunday or Monday?

[Ubiquitous]

By Michael McCarthy

With President Donald Trump's attacks against protesting NFL players
still reverberating, the league's TV partners decided to air live
coverage of the national anthem before Week 3 games. Those partners
left out a key element of the coverage: crowd shots of angry fans.

Networks typically do not televise the national anthem except for
the Super Bowl and other special occasions, but they recognized
there would be intense viewer interest this past weekend.

Some fans, if they reacted at all, happily clapped and cheered
during protests, but others did not, and they angrily let their home
teams know it. The audio mics picked up the boos. Yet the TV
networks mostly avoided crowd shots Sunday, so there was never a
chance for viewers to see fans jeering players.

A segment of Patriots fans in Foxborough, Mass., for example, nearly
booed their own players off the field when some Pats sat or kneeled,
with some screaming, "Stand up!"

WATCH: Patriots fans boo their team during anthem protest in
wake of
Trump's comments. More from @arniestapleton:
https://t.co/5dfjstwRJs pic.twitter.com/kvLmSzG28w
— AP NFL (@AP_NFL) September 24, 2017

One behind-the-scenes TV staffer at another stadium told Sporting
News that camera operators were ordered to avoid crowd shots in case
they showed fans counterprotesting the protests.

NBC Sports, CBS Sports, Fox Sports and ESPN pay billions each year
to televise live NFL games. The league saw this weekend's
unprecedented anthem coverage as a golden opportunity to demonstrate
unity among players, coaches and owners -- and opposition to Trump's
comments.

If crowd shots were indeed purposely avoided, it was a wise business
decision by the networks not to bite the hand that feeds them their
most popular programming, but a weak move from a journalistic
standpoint. By covering one of the most significant days in NFL
history with rose-colored glasses, the networks cheated viewers. We
got an incomplete picture of what really happened in stadiums on
Sunday and Monday.

Yes, the main television focus should have been on the players,
coaches and owners sitting, kneeling or linking arms. But fans hold
the ultimate power over the networks and the league, and they were
missing in action during coverage.

CBS spokeswoman Jennifer Sabatelle told Sporting News no one at her
network was instructed to ignore the crowd.

"The anthem was covered by each crew in their own way, with many
choosing to stay with what was happening on the field," Sabatelle
said. "There was no directive given to not show the fans."

And yet, fans were hardly shown, much less interviewed, by NFL
networks Sunday.

During ESPN's "Monday Night Football" telecast of the Cowboys-
Cardinals in Glendale, Ariz., play-by-play announcer Sean McDonough
noted, "Boos can be heard from this sellout crowd" as Jerry Jones
and the Cowboys collectively took a knee.

But we never saw any of these frustrated spectators. Were they
booing both teams for protesting? Just booing the visiting Cowboys?
Both? We got only one quick shot of a fan holding Old Glory while
Jordin Sparks sang "The Star-Spangled Banner."

The booing at the NFL football game last night, when the
entire
Dallas team dropped to its knees, was loudest I have ever
heard.
Great anger
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 26, 2017

ESPN declined to comment, but a source said there was no edict from
Bristol, that it's up to the director of the "MNF" game telecast to
make the call from the production truck on what shots to use.

During NBC's telecast of "Sunday Night Football" in Landover, Md.,
we got plenty close-up views of Raiders and Redskins sitting or
linking arms during the anthem. The fans were strictly in the
background.

Fans booing Jets and Dolphins players were loud and clear during
CBS's telecast from East Rutherford, N.J. But we never saw them.
Instead, we got a lot of field-level shots of linked arms players
and saluting police officers.

Thought I heard boos as #Jets +#Dolphins knelt or took a
knee during
playing of national anthem. CBS avoided crowd shots. Anybody
@MetLife?
— Michael McCarthy (@MMcCarthyREV) September 24, 2017

During the singing of the anthem before Giants-Eagles at Lincoln
Financial Field in Philadelphia, Fox stuck to up-close, ground-up
shots of players, coaches and owners. The only image of fans was one
long shot showing them clapping before the network cut to
commercial.

Again, the story of fans who were not enamored of Sunday's anthem
protests were out there if TV networks wanted to show us. The
reactions of those fans should have been a bigger story.

In Detroit, a contingent of Lions fans booed their own players when
they protested for racial justice, according to the Detroit Free
Press.

Perhaps it's unfair to judge networks by strict journalistic
standards since they are effectively billion-dollar business
partners with the league. But viewers shouldn't have to go to social
media or local newspapers to find out what really happens inside
stadiums.

We're all big boys and girls. The sky isn't going to fall if
networks show the booing of protesting players.

Plenty of people are dubious about the league's real aim in all of
this. Does it really support the players' rights to protest, or was
the emphasis on "Unity" a self-serving PR ploy by a league seeking
to deflect attention from the real causes of Kaepernick's protest?

Deadspin's Tom Ley, for example, called BS on "Choose Your Side"
Sunday: "The NFL is literally using this for brand marketing."

Next time, the networks showing NFL games should keep it real. Give
us the truth, as uncomfortable as that might be, and not the glossy,
Hallmark card-version the NFL wants us to see.

--
Nick Gillispie describes the Obama-era media as "more prone to being
lapdogs than watchdogs." That has a nice ring to it, but it seems to
us the metaphor is a little off. The pro-Obama media are acting like
watchdogs--but watchdogs whose master is Obama rather than the
public.

[Sam Cornelius]

There were no fans in the stands to boo because they were all at
home watching old Trump speeches on Fox News Network and
practicing how to snap to, stand straight and salute the flag
every time they see one, even on a flag pin.


Besides, Michael McCarthy who wrote that piece must be some kind
of leftist socialist traitor if he was tuning in to the game after
Trump ordered us not to.

[Ubiquitous]

Someone's newest sockpuppet wrote:

>There were no fans in the stands to boo because they were all at
>home watching old Trump speeches on Fox News Network and
>practicing how to snap to, stand straight and salute the flag
>every time they see one, even on a flag pin.

Godwill's Law violation noted.

>Besides, Michael McCarthy who wrote that piece must be some kind
>of leftist socialist traitor if he was tuning in to the game after
>Trump ordered us not to.

Ad hominem noted.

Get back to us whe you have a real argument to make.

--
Dems & the media want Trump to be more like Obama, but then he'd
have to audit liberals & wire tap reporters' phones.

[Sam Cornelius]

There were no fans in the stands to boo because they were all at
home watching old Trump speeches on Fox News Network and
practicing how to snap to, stand straight and salute the flag
every time they see one, even on a flag pin.

[Sam Cornelius]