A HARD HITTING 60 MINUTES PIECE ON CHRIS BERMAN, IT WASN'T

[TMC]

http://www.awfulannouncing.com/2013/april/a-hard-hitting-60-minutes-piece-on-chris-berman-it-wasn-t.html

Written by Ken Fang on Friday, 05 April 2013 11:07.

"Legend."

"Larger Than Life."

"One of the Best-Known Sportscasters of All-Time."

"Entertaining"

"...the Face of ESPN."

'... most famous for changing the way sports fans get their news."

"A master of delivery"

"... highlight king"

Those are some of the words used by CBS News reporter Lara Logan to
describe Chris Berman in this month's edition of "60 Minutes Sports"
that premiered this week on Showtime. When you hear those words, you
know that this is not going to be the typical hard-hitting 60 Minutes
profile of the polarizing sportscaster, but more of a glowing puff
piece. In fact, there were times when Logan, a dedicated war zone
correspondent for the regular 60 Minutes, appeared to be charmed by
Berman.

Throughout the profile, Logan called Berman by his nickname, "Boomer"
and didn't ask any him hard-hitting questions. The profile gave credit
to Berman for helping in the growth of ESPN (can't argue this point,
he was there from the beginning). But she seemed to give Berman credit
for establishing coverage of some of the big events at the network
dating back to the 1982 NFC Championship between Dallas and San
Francisco from where Berman reported.

Now back in October before I joined Awful Announcing, your humble
author wrote a piece supporting Berman's enshrinement on this site's
Mount Rushmore and while I still believe in this, there's no doubting
that he has his share of fans. However, 60 Minutes Sports made it
appear that Berman could hardly do anything wrong. There were
allusions to his critics to which there are many. And there was a
brief glimpse of the infamous YouTube video of Berman yelling at
staffers at the ESPNZone in Baltimore. But there was not any reaction
from Berman to how the video was posted or his behavior on the set
that night.

http://www.awfulannouncing.com/2012-articles/october/aa-s-decision-2012-vote-chris-berman-for-aa-s-mount-rushmore.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3TLG_LtWhj4

Berman seemed to get too much credit for his 23 minute silence during
Cal Ripken's 2,131st consecutive game breaking Lou Gehrig's record.

There were glaring omissions. No one else at ESPN was interviewed to
discuss Berman, no producers, executives or other on-air talent to
discuss their experiences with him. And there were no interviews with
critics. The report was mostly one-on-one interviews.

There was one amusing moment when Logan delved into Berman's bulging
wallet which is used to store business cards.

http://www.awfulannouncing.com/2013/march/chris-berman-has-a-george-costanza-wallet-situation-going-on.html

The most controversial moments came from Logan asking Berman about
performance enhancing drugs and NFL concussions. Berman did lobby for
Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens for the Baseball Hall of Fame and said
there wasn't much that could be done to reduce the amount of
concussions.

But overall, there wasn't much from Berman that we did not already
know and we really didn't learn anything new. For 60 Minutes, it
wasn't its strongest report, but maybe we'll get some harder hitting
pieces on ESPN down the road.

[RichA]

On Apr 7, 12:35 am, TMC <tmc1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.awfulannouncing.com/2013/april/a-hard-hitting-60-minutes-p...

>
> Written by Ken Fang on Friday, 05 April 2013 11:07.
>
> "Legend."
>
> "Larger Than Life."
>
> "One of the Best-Known Sportscasters of All-Time."
>
> "Entertaining"
>
> "...the Face of ESPN."
>
> '... most famous for changing the way sports fans get their news."
>
> "A master of delivery"
>
> "... highlight king"
>
> Those are some of the words used by CBS News reporter Lara Logan to
> describe Chris Berman in this month's edition of "60 Minutes Sports"
> that premiered this week on Showtime.

She seems to fawn over any man with money.