{"id":12982,"date":"2010-01-08T10:48:03","date_gmt":"2010-01-08T17:48:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/?p=12982"},"modified":"2010-09-21T17:34:56","modified_gmt":"2010-09-22T00:34:56","slug":"put-a-double-cork-in-it-christine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/?p=12982","title":{"rendered":"Put A Double Cork In It Christine"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Last week when Kevin Pearce knocked himself out while training in the Park City Halfpipe<\/a><\/strong> he became the biggest story of the “pre-Olympic” media. Granted, it has all the trappings of Olympic drama: youth, talent, ambition, and sudden tradgedy. We can already hear the soft music, slow-motion falling snow, and soft-spoken voice over.<\/p>\n

But for those who love and care about Danny, some of this media coverage can seem trite, annoying, and occasionally damaging. Such was the case when ABC News<\/strong> aired the above Olympic Hopeful In A Coma<\/a><\/em><\/strong> video which aired on January 5, 2009 while many of us where on the snow at Mammoth for the US Snowboarding Grand Prix<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In the report ABC News spoke to Snowboarder Magazine’s<\/em><\/strong> Pat Bridges<\/strong> who explained that progression in snowboarding pushes athletes into “going bigger, going faster, and doing more difficult tricks.” Australian Olympian Torah Brigh<\/strong>t was also quoted.<\/p>\n

Then ABC rolled in with a live interview an “expert” named Christine Brennan,<\/strong> a “sports columnist” for USA Today<\/em><\/strong>. In about 30 seconds Brennan was able to discredit the entire sport of snowboarding saying:<\/p>\n

This sport was added for TV ratings . . . the international Olympic committee wanted to bring a sport like this into the Olympics to try to encourage better TV ratings and viewership from a younger audience. So obviously the more extreme . . . the better it is for ratings and the better for them and their endorsements. That’s how this goes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Old-media sports columnists are notorious for inciting readership with ignorance, and truthfully we never would have typed Ms. Brennan’s name if she had made more rational comments so great for her. On the snowboard side of things however, people got pretty riled up.
\nTV commentator and pro snowboarder Todd Richards<\/a><\/strong> was one of the first to throw what his wife called a “twitfit” .<\/p>\n

Christine Brennan you are a hack “reporter\/consultant” that should actually get real opinions and facts before reporting on “extreme sports,” he said via Twitter<\/a><\/strong>. , , Here is the deal on why i am pissed about this abc fiasco: i think of myself as one of the creditable mouth pieces for snowboarding on tv. i really take pride in having snowboarding being shown with integrity to the masses. i may joke and be sarcastic at times but i am….really protective of the sport that gave me a reason for being. how would a baseball player feel if i was suddenly a self proclaimed authority on what professional baseball players should be doing ? i would be strung up by my taint hairs..right ?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But he wasn’t the only one to get upset. Here are links to the rest (thanks to Yobeat.com<\/a><\/strong>):<\/p>\n

Yobeat Inteview with Todd Richards<\/a><\/strong>
\nRumorator’s Snowboarding and Public Perception<\/a><\/strong>
\nPierre Wikberg’s In Cas You Haven’t Heard<\/a><\/strong>
\nAngry Snowboarder’s The Mainstream Media Still Doesn’t Get It<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week when Kevin Pearce knocked himself out while training in the Park City Halfpipe he became the biggest story of the “pre-Olympic” media. Granted, it has all the trappings of Olympic drama: youth, talent, ambition, and sudden tradgedy. We can already hear the soft music, slow-motion falling snow, and soft-spoken voice over. But for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12982"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12982"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18050,"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12982\/revisions\/18050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}