Good art wrote:
Weldon,
Would you agree that the headline stating that Web had a "tantrum", influences, or biases your audience before each person in this group gets the chance to arrive at that judgment independently, based on the details in the report or from the interview itself.
After reading the headline, I was expecting something more provocative than Alan's behavior actually revealed. I just saw a guy who was really down on the race and down on himself and nothing more.
It may have been difficult putting into words the essence you were trying to communicate in the headline and in the report, but I and I sense many others read it with a pejorative overtone even if this was not your intent.
Mike
As for the headline we thought of that quite a bit.
Webster's defines tantrum as, "a fit of bad temper".
This definitely fell into that category. I just communicated with Tom Davis and Emory Mort who both witnessed the entire thing and they both stood behind the word tantrum and the need to report what they saw. We did not do this on a whim.
I just emailed Emory about it and he wrote back, "He did throw a tantrum, it happened, we were there and witnessed it, we spent a lot of time trying to report accurately what happened." and feels no need to change the headline.
As for your comment, "I just saw a guy who was really down on the race and down on himself and nothing more. " If that's all you take from the article we did not do a good job of conveying what happened.
The interview was an hour after Webb's "tantrum". Webb is just upset in the interview.
I just called Tom Davis who witnessed the entire thing.
Tom said, Webb was "incredibly over the top, immature". "Embarrassing", "Unacceptable". He had stronger language at times but we'll have Tom on the show this week so you can hear from him.
Tom said 3 reasonable adults saw Webb's entire behavior after the race and felt it was so above the norm it should be reported.
Tom said, "(webb) can't act like this."
He added "we're not out to embarrass Alan Webb. He embarrassed himself".
Tom noted Alan Webb is one of his favorite athletes as a fan.
Yes it would have been much, mmuch easier not to report any of this. But we felt Webb's behavior rose to such a standard it had to be reported. His competitiveness is legendary but this crossed a line. Doesn't mean Alan Webb is a bad person. We all make mistakes. Hopefully, Ray or Alberto talks to him about it and he emerges a better athlete.