I rewound and watched Brett’s interview last night TWICE, because I had seen an early release of some of the comments from it that didn’t jive with what Brett said.

Then, later in the evening, I heard ESPN reporting that Brett might “show up at training camp and cause a circus.” HE NEVER SAID THAT. In fact, he never even mentioned training camp. That was the media filling blanks they created.

“It’s tempting just to, as everyone said, you know, call their bluff or whatever,” Favre said. “I think it’s going to be a circus in itself already, whether I go there, whatever.” Favre’s tone of voice while making that comment clearly indicated he thought doing that was absurd. “I don’t want to go back there just to stick it to them, ” Favre added.

Perhaps he was referring to training camp – perhaps he was talking about playing at Green Bay in general, but ESPN’s reporting spun it as if he were vindictively wanting to get back at the Packers by disrupting training camp. Quite the contrary, he was just saying that others were suggesting he could call the Packers’ bluff, and that while it was tempting, he had no desire to “stick it to them.”

Further, ESPN was reporting that Brett was even now waffling on whether he wants to come back and play. That’s not true! He was stating that he was ready and able, but that “where is a different story.”

This entire thing makes me ashamed of the sports world in total. To treat a guy who played with so much heart, honestly, and dignity like this really disgusts me. It was the media who ginned up this retirement story every year, NOT Favre. Yet I heard it characterized on ESPN last night as Favre’s “never-ending reversals.” He reversed himself ONCE. Other than that, HE’S BEEN HOUNDED ABOUT IT and merely responded that he hadn’t made any decisions. Good grief, during those years, as if his age and the team’s success weren’t weighing heavily enough on his mind, his wife was battling cancer and his father died. He would be irrational not to carefully consider putting the kind of total, grueling physical and emotional effort into another year that such a decision warranted.

The media loves salacious BS, and if it doesn’t exist, they certainly know how to create it, but sports is generally pretty straight forward. Next, they’ll be changing the scores of sporting contests just to fit into the story lines they create.

Watch it for yourself, then compare it what the idiot talking heads are saying and reporting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRRXTdZfJ90

The media did the same thing in the Democratic primary. They rammed as much drama and controversy as they could into it for the sake of greed, money, and ratings, and at the expense of democracy. You should see the ratings CNN and MSNBC got during the primary. It was a freakin’ bonanza.

Further, Fox News edited the Favre interview: 1) so they could split it up into 2 nights and up their ratings, and so they could play up anything that was even remotely controversial. According to http://gretawire.foxnews.com/, earlier in the morning, the entire 40 min. interview with Favre would be available on that website shortly, now they’re saying it won’t be posted there, but more excerpts will be aired on Fox Tonight:

[quote]We have showed you two parts of our interview with Green Bay Packer Brett Favre…but we spent much more time with him. (We taped about 40 minutes.) We will post here – on GretaWire – the rest of the interview that you have not seen ON THE RECORD. I expect we will post the rest tomorrow…

UPDATE – (Wed)…the entire interview won’t get posted here until tomorrow…but we are looking at airing more of this interview tonight that you have not seen …[/quote]

http://gretawire.foxnews.com/2008/07/15/gretawire-note-bret-favre/

Like Fox News can’t spare a few moments from exploiting that poor woman’s death whose body was just found, [i]ad nauseum [/i]to show the entire interview unedited.

Now people are tuning in and clicking away on Fox News, sports networks, and other websites to find out what’s going on with Favre and the Packers, so they’re milking it for all it’s worth and outright LYING in order to make it sound as dramatic and contentious as possible. Too bad if they’ve got to turn Favre into a villian in the process. For a lot of jealous, loser can’t do “commentators” and writers that’s just an added bonus. If they want to create news, they should get off their flabby asses and play a sport, not throw feces at the ones who do.

I swear, this is really sickening. I’ve already gotten to where I get my news mostly from NPR, PBS, and digging on the web on my own, so only watching the actual sporting events and shunning ESPN and the others won’t even be noticeable in my world.

If we keep tuning in to this tabloid crap, and the media keeps profiting from this behavior, we can kiss real objective “reporting” good bye. I for one, will not.

http://teristyrades.blogspot.com/2008/07/favre-part-ii-media-created-epic-get.html

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