Press Woe: Why Christine Brennan’s WNBA coverage is a journalistic reckoning that goes beyond the game...

Christine Brennan's time in the WNBA is a media member's Rorschach Test and it’s time we let an inside conversation out into the open.

I’m sure you’ve heard the term “inside conversations” before. Essentially it’s a concept of ‘WE can talk about this because we have a familiarity of what’s happening here but YOU cannot’. On some level and for some conversations, I get the thinking. If you’re not well versed in a topic and you’re seeing those who are debate on it…maybe stay out of it.

But here, I’m gonna bring an inside conversation outside because while much has been made about USA Today’s Christine Brennan I couldn’t help but feel some of the discussion was missing. What she represents within our industry is a divide rooted in race and age. As people take sides, it reveals much about their values as a person but also as a reporter.

If you’ve ever worked in a newsroom, no doubt you’ve heard the term ‘character’ before. For those who haven’t, a character is, for lack of a better term, a person. If you’re reporting on a new highway that’s being built between two cities, an editor or producer will ask if you have a ‘character’. Essentially, ‘who is the face that we can put to this issue and how can their emotion about it set the stage for the story’. I use the term regularly at work though I understand it’s semi-loaded. Why, you may ask? Because when you define a living person as a ‘character’, you indirectly strip them of their humanity. They are a part of your story now and you have the power to define the terms with which their perspective goes out.

Enter, Christine Brennan.

It is true that the USA Today Columnist is a legend and true, legitimate pioneer for women in sports journalism. Part of her reputation as a truth seeker and no BS writer is her willingness to take stances that may be controversial. It’s just that, for the first time, she’s taking a stance that isn’t widely accepted by members of the intelligentsia. To say the Washington football organization needed to change its longtime nickname was something people in many corners of sports media agreed with, so Brennan’s rep as a fearless agitator of the status quo grew when she was among the first to stand on a name change. But, in the world of figure skating where she frequently reports, her reputation is a little more complex. She’s shown herself to be a stalwart backstop against United States Figure Skating and the issues that have occurred within the organization, specifically those pertaining to John Coughlin and Ashley Wagner. At the same time, those in the figure skating world have noticed her tendency to play favorites and go after specific (read: athletes of color and Russian) individuals — from Americans Karen Chen and Vincent Zhou to Russian skaters Diana Davis and Gleb Smolkin — if she sees them as potential antagonists in her story. In the case of Davis, whose mother was a central figure in the Kamila Valieva doping case, Brennan had a particularly questionable interaction. Below is the transcript…

Christine Brennan, USA Today Sports: “Diana, how difficult has it been to skate knowing about the doping violation of your mother?

Gleb Smolkin, Russian skater: “I said already 3 times, we don’t want to talk about it, I already said that we wish Kamila all the best. She’s a great athlete, she’s a great skater, and she definitely has a bright future, doesn’t matter what’s happened or what’s going to happen.

Brennan: “Even if she doped, it’s ok?”

Smolkin: “I have no idea what’s going on, alright? We’re done with this..”

Brennan [interrupts]: “Can Diana talk about it?”

Smolkin: “No, not on this topic.”

Brennan: “Can she speak?”

Smolkin: “No. Not with you, and not on this topic. We’re done.”

Brennan: “Can she speak about anything? How are you feeling?”

Smolkin [translates for Davis]: She says she feels good, she’s happy.

Brennan: “Doesn’t she speak English? She’s an American.”

Smolkin: “A little bit, but not much.”

Brennan: “Yeah, you’re…a little bit of English? Really? You don’t speak English…”

Smolkin: “She left America when she was 3 years old.”

Brennan: “So, literally, no English.”

Smolkin: “A little bit but not for the interview because she’s…”

Brennan [interrupts]: “So she can’t say one word.”

Diana Davis, Russian skater [in English]: I’m happy.

Brennan: “You’re happy.”

Smolkin: “Are you happy?”

Brennan: “I’m thrilled.”

Here’s the journalistic Rorschach because I’m sure most of you read that interaction and came away thinking, “what an asshole.” In Brennan’s view here, she clearly sees herself as a truth seeker. Within the story Diana Davis’ mother, Eteri Tutberidze, is the character. She has already been ascribed a role: the villain. It’s important to note that sometimes, those labels aren’t necessarily unearned. Tutberidze was a central figure in the doping case of the 15 year old Valieva, creating massive controversy at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. But, to Brennan, the story and the accountability of her character matters the most. Nevermind that Davis was 19 years old, hard of hearing and also having to deal with the very human emotion of your mother being the center of a global investigation. To Brennan, an American born teenager who trained in Michigan had to speak English and having Smolkin speak for her was evidence of an avoidance of the truth she sought.

To me, it’s an inside conversation among journalists because Brennan’s style of reporting is rooted in a generational gap. Many of the elder statesmen journalists did not grow up in the time of Murrow, Cronkite or Brinkley. Instead, folks like Brennan cut their teeth in the late 80’s and early 90’s when ‘infotainment’ started to take hold as the consumer’s choice of news gathering. In that type of journalism, you’re not arriving to a house fire, seeing a family and thinking “this is awful. I hate that we have to ask them about something so painful.” You’re instead thinking “I have these characters that will drive home the emotion of loss in this story.” While there’s plenty of media members that have evolved with the times there are some who still exist and see the world as ‘stories’ and people as ‘characters’ before seeing them as humans. It’s evident in the interaction with Smolkin and Davis and it’s what stuck out to me when reports dropped of DeWanna Bonner confronting Brennan after the DiJonai Carrington question and asking she treat the players like humans. Brennan, through no fault of her own, is cut from that cloth but doesn’t seem to have a willingness to evolve past that formative set of beliefs. She calls it truth seeking but the reality is it’s moving chess pieces (actual people in this case) to set the table for a story you want to tell as opposed to seeing the story in front of you.

Younger journalists have, for the most part, roundly condemned Brennan’s behavior while she and other old guard reporters chalk it up to sensitivity surrounding truth seeking. Beyond the cultural blindspots she appears to exhibit (which can be traced back to her figure skating coverage), the issue with Brennan’s WNBA coverage is the cynicism with which she’s doing it. She’s writing an unauthorized biography on Caitlin Clark and clearly appears to have an affinity for the 22 year old that goes beyond her play on the floor. To her, it appears that everyone in ‘the story’ is ancillary to ‘the character’. But the issue Brennan doesn’t seem to realize is it’s stripping the agency of these women and that’s not what this league is or has ever been about. Nor should it be.

I don’t agree with the WNBPA’s call to revoke Brennan’s credential mostly because I think it focuses on one person instead of going at everyone, from Bobby Burack to Jim Trotter, who have parachuted into pregame pressers to sow discord before disappearing when it’s time to actually cover the games themselves. She is a symptom, not a cause. But unfortunately, she is not unique in this world of journalism and her repeated actions is what triggered the statement more than the beliefs themselves.

The issue is what it means for access of good journalists long term. When these types of things happen, it is absolutely fair game for players to want to circle their wagons and shut the media writ large out. Pulling away locker room access was equal parts a desire for women’s right to privacy, shielding them from bad faith actors and taking back some power within the dynamic. But it brings up an interesting question about whether or not Brennan, or someone like her, would have a better time having the expanded access to ask these questions in a more intimate setting. Journalists that defend locker room access point to the fact that you are able to talk, on or off the record, with players that don’t typically get called to a press conference. It’s there that good reporters are able to build sources, trust and a rapport with players on a human level. That extends out of the locker room and allows for better relationships to form. The problem is that more and more, bad journalists are getting access to the room (which is a whole other conversation about who gets credentialed, but that’s for another time).

It’s hard to justify locker room access when you have individuals like Brennan or reporters that go viral for asking less than humanizing questions to players in the NFL. Some of it is fair game but other times it feels invasive and wrong. Conversely, I would never advocate for less access. To bridge the gaps in understanding, we need more human interaction not less. I’m unsure of how well the postgame ‘mixed zone’ works in the National Women’s Soccer League but I’ve never understood why that couldn’t be a standard. Let the players go to the locker room and get changed, reporters set up their cameras and players have to walk through a zone on their way out of the arena. If they stop for cameras, we talk to them. It allows you to stop a bench player and ask some questions and ‘sidle’ them on the way out. If someone doesn’t want to talk, they keep walking and potentially eat how that will be reported. From my end, it feels like a happy medium where private spaces remain that, reporters still have opportunities to stop people and just chat with them as people and let everyone working on deadlines to be able to get the quotes they need. Especially if you make the zone like it is in Track & Field, where you can’t sneak out a different way to avoid talking to the media.

More than ever, sports journalists are having a crisis of identity. There’s a pendulum swing occurring where, in aiming to get away from the reputation of the Christine Brennan’s of the world we become overly celebratory and increasingly avoidant of hard questions. Instead of seeing players as people, some have decided to put them on a pedestal. Brennan is such a fascinating case study for assessing people’s individual journalistic values. The reality of her situation, much like journalism as a general concept, is that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

With that in mind, I don’t want to overly navel gaze my line of work (pretty rich considering the 2,000 or so words I just expended on the subject). Those that adhere to Brennan’s reporting axioms are slowly trickling out of the business but I think it’s worth calling it out the bad behavior when we see it. Does she have a point in that hard questions are a part of the job and shouldn’t be shamed out of the profession? Yes. But it shouldn’t be controversial to respect players as people before you even begin the interaction. Sadly, when your whole life has been devoted to ‘the story’, you lose track of the fact that ‘characters’ aren’t yours to control.