Thursday, January 29, 2009

ESPN commentators: Get a clue!

The constant babble from the crew at ESPN would not be quite as irritating if it contained a reasonable amount of accuracy. For example, within a very short period tonight--ESPN commentators butchered Sabine Lisicki's name, reported incorrect information about Vera Zvonareva's ranking, reported incorrect information about Maria Sharapova's injury, and did everything they could to read something into Zvonareva's towel-over-the-head during changeovers (Zvonareva does this on just about every changeover at every match at every tournament).

There is something wrong when fans often know more facts about the tour than the people who are paid a lot of money to deliver those facts to the public.

7 comments:

Sasha said...

Oh, we have the same wih the BBC. Sam Smith was having a rant about how Dinara Safina has 'been on the tour for eight years and has ample time to correct her name pronounciation.' How many of these people have such high profile jobs is baffling to me, particularly ass they are almost always so biased towards one player.

Diane said...

Safina indeed should have said something, but she is a young female, which generally means "not assertive."

More important, however, is the fact that Smith gets paid to pronounce the names, and it is her responsibility, not the players' responsibility, to pronounce them correctly. Of I can pronounce them correctly, surely some lazy-ass commentator can.

Sasha said...

Yes, it's just they seem so indignant to pronounce the name properly if they have been pronouncing it wrong. Maybe it's a pride issue. However, like you said it is their responsibility and they'd get very annoyed if their name was repetitively pronounced wrongly.

ken said...

It kills me--because I would be such a good commentator. Wouldn't use masculinist language, would correctly pronounce names, wouldn't be self-hating and/or sexist. I know the game. I know the players. And I could insert a little fashion info too. I would never ask the mundane questions most of them do. And I wouldn't throw up soft balls for former players such as Patrick McEnroe to make them sound intelligent.
I'm usually not so adamant that I could someone else's job better than him/her. But I just know it's the case here.

Diane said...

ken, I have no doubt at all that you would do a better job.

Did you hear Shriver last night, wanting to make sure everyone knew how humiliating it must be for a male player to be compared with a female one, instead of vice versa? The odd thing was that the comment to which she referred was not even such a comparison. Pam "At least they didn't call him Mr. Davenport" Shriver automatically read it as such and rushed to protect all the poor vulnerable males.

And for the record, her colleague, Mary Joe Fernandez, did make such a comparison the other day. She said that some male player (I forget which) had a shot like one of Davenport's. Shriver's head must have exploded.

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