Kobe-rama

I think it’s safe to say the Baltimore Ravens’ star running back Jamal Lewis isn’t looking forward to the off-season. For most players, the break provides a healthy reprieve from the endless bone-crushing contact NFL players endure for sixteen grueling games each season. But for Lewis, who pleaded guilty to a drug conspiracy charge in a federal court a few weeks back, next year can’t come soon enough. His spring down time will instead be replaced by hard time. Specifically, four months in federal prison and two more in a halfway house.

Maybe he’ll phone ahead to shortstop Rafael Furcal of the Atlanta Braves for some pointers about how to pass the time. Furcal is currently in jail for three weeks after a second DUI incident violated his probation.

It seems like it’s becoming harder and harder to distinguish the sports news ticker from the police blotter. But sorting through the proverbial overgrown weeds of recent athlete miscues, assaults, arrests, and probation hearings, one name inevitably stands above the rest. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s hear it for Kobe Bryant.

Two years ago the prospect of the Lakers’ star being involved in anything like this seemed unthinkable. But just as fate always seems to deal us a new hand when we least expect it, we learned last summer that reputations can change at the drop of a hat.

Kobe Bryant’s criminal case never officially went to trial. The only court in Bryant’s future is of the basketball variety. The accuser’s legal team is regrouping by planning a civil suit for an unknown sum of money. After draining local legal and law enforcement resources, taxpayers have been unceremoniously stuck with the bill.

Despite attempts to respect America’s “innocent until proven guilty” mindset for Bryant and conversely protect the accuser’s identity from the public, the media coverage failed in other areas. Since the case has been under intense public scrutiny, we’ve seen transcripts of Bryant’s interview with law officials right after the incident and know his infidelity was probably not an isolated incident. We also know details about the accuser’s emotionally turbulent past. But we don’t know much more about what happened in that Eagle County hotel room that night than we did the day after it happened. Thanks to an overabundance of daily print, broadcast, and online coverage, we know far too much about far too little.

The initial challenge of covering the case centered on the sensitive yet sensational nature of a high profile celebrity sexual assault story. The situation was destined to test the media’s ability to balance the flow of viable public information with the temptation to furnish unnecessary amounts of mindless speculation and gossip. The first (predicable) course of action the media took was to turn Bryant’s arrest into Page One news. But as day after day of in-depth print, television and online coverage continued to spew from the Rocky Mountains, it seemed as if the media had confused a big story with an important story.

John Temple was certainly justified when he defended his paper’s decision to provide detailed coverage of the Kobe Bryant incident in the July 26, 2003 edition of the Rocky Mountain News. “I heard complaints that we made too big a deal out of the charges against Bryant,” Temple wrote. “I disagree. It's a big story.”
Certainly the Kobe Bryant case a big story – the massive media convergence in Colorado cemented it as such. Since Bryant is indisputably one of the best basketball players of our era and a celebrity, it was no surprise that his off-the-court deeds were of interest to basketball fans and celebrity gawkers alike.

But public interest alone should not dictate a story’s importance. Kobe Bryant’s situation doesn’t affect national politics or play a part in determining foreign policy. It’s not about widespread healthcare reform. These subject areas spawn important stories because they have the potential to affect our everyday lives. In the grand scheme of things, there is nothing meaningful or vital about Bryant’s legal issues.

In fact, they are chronically insignificant to 99.9 percent of us.
Since the district attorney dropped all charges against Kobe Bryant, we can only assume that he is not guilty of the initial charges. But despite the end result, both parties’ reputations have been equally tarnished. So now the question is: who exactly is the victim here? Kobe Bryant lost lucrative endorsement contracts and respect from fans and peers. While the mainstream media upheld its decision to protect the accuser’s name, tabloids like Globe and personal Web sites made the accuser’s name and other private information readily available. Seems like a lose-lose situation if I’ve ever seen one.

But the greatest crime of all was perpetrated upon the public. Our insatiable thirst for the Bryant saga fed the sensational aura of the story and distracted us from other, more significant news events.