NOTE: This was originally published by mistake without the last paragraph. It is now fixed. We regret the publishing error.
Did the media distort Al Jazeera’s report?
by Jordan Cooper
Our news media is trusted to be used to tell us the weather. Inform us about suspicious people around our communities. And tell us about our sports figures too. The closest people to these athletes are the news media other than their teams. CNN, NBC, ABC, BET, CBS, and Fox are all believed to have a high amount of integrity. People may poke at them for fabricating stories to some level but never say stories are significantly incredulous. In contrast, for Al Jazeera they’re seen as the news station that routinely covered the perpetrators of the worst terrorist attack on American soil. Al Jazeera has excellent journalists, reporters, and commentators. They take on difficult interviews such as talking to the late Osama Bin Laden and others. Additionally, Al Jazeera has a solid level of confidence with the military too in the Arab World and at home in the United States.
However, Al Jazeera isn’t respected to report on our professional athletes who are possibly doping, which is a global concern for all countries with competitive sports. [Go here to read some of the media reports on its reporting.] Doping is a medical and ethical issue that keeps athletic competitive events on level ground. Al Jazeera is seen as the problem child in the media that could be comparable to the nature of the biblical figure Ishmael in Christianity, due to their focus on some of America’s favorite athletes, which is wrong. They didn’t say anybody took performance-enhancing drugs or did actually dope. All they said was that these athletes were in close association with the peds that were allegedly being given out by a medical clinic. Yet, other national news media outlets shot down their reports quicker than a cargo plane in a no-fly zone.
The accusations against Denver Broncos Quarterback Peyton Manning were defended vigorously by nearly every national news media outlet in the U.S. Nobody came out and argued for NY Yankee Alex Rodriguez or San Francisco Giant Barry Bonds when they were alleged to have taken steroids. It is very uneven in the media coverage for these particular cases. Still, the NFL’s drug policy is strong enough to legally discover who actually took the peds and which people should be disciplined or apologized to. Therefore, we should give all news media the benefit of the doubt about their credible information before we discard them quicker than a spam e-mail message.
Jordan Thomas Cooper is a 2015 graduate of the University of South Carolina with a degree in History and a 2010 graduate of the Real Estate School of Success in Irmo. He is the first African-American to serve in both the governor and lieutenant governor’s office as an aide and first to serve in the Inspector General’s Office in S.C. (Haley) He served as the first black staffer on a GOP presidential campaign in S.C. (Perry 2011) He happens to be the second black presidential campaign speechwriter in American History and the first for a GOP presidential campaign (Bush 2015). He also played football for Coach Steve Spurrier.