WHILE not normally moved to defend ESPN’s Chris Berman, he’s no less a sympathetic figure than any other victim of a theft.
In recent weeks, audio and video recordings of Berman, several of them many years old (or “Back, back, back”), have been widely circulated on the Internet.
The recordings show Berman angrily spewing profanities or engaging in indiscreet conversation with co-workers – scenes clearly unintended for public airing – while Berman was seated in an ESPN studio, awaiting the resumption of his on-air work.
These recordings made their way out of ESPN and then to the Internet, the new favorite stomping grounds for eavesdroppers, vandals, voyeurs and naughty little boys and girls of all ages.
And while Berman, who by now should have grown to fully respected status among American sportscasters, instead chooses to play the circus clown who shoots himself out of a cannon, he doesn’t deserve this kind of grief.
For starters, these recordings were stolen from ESPN.
Perhaps they were stolen by some young, male wise guy, someone from the demographic ESPN encourages to watch ESPN. But theft is theft. And unless Berman is legally being investigated, perhaps as a threat to national security, the distribution of his purloined workplace conversations make him the victim of a crime.
That written – and certainly not to defend the thief or thieves – Berman’s sense of professional self-security, even 10 years ago, was so thin that he made himself an easy victim. In a TV studio sense, Berman often left his car unlocked, his wallet lying on the front seat. He didn’t take care to take care. All broadcasters should know that any and all words spoken into a hot microphone, even when spoken off the air, can grow legs.
Ironically, in one tape, Berman was heard to take a poke at Al Michaels. In 1987, Michaels, then with ABC, ignited a regional storm when, during a commercial in Game 1 of the Cards-Twins World Series, he didn’t know he was being heard outside the booth and broadcast truck when he panned the game as dull and mocked the Minnesota hotel in which he was staying.
A reporter for the Minneapolis StarTribune, having heard Michaels’ comments via a home-satellite feed, reported them. Michaels compared that to sifting through someone’s garbage. He vowed revenge. But, during a commercial break in Game 6, Michaels made things worse by cursing the reporter – this time fully knowing he was being heard in satellite-wired homes.
In Berman’s case, he was mugged not by himself but by an insider or insiders, a person or persons once and perhaps still with ESPN. Berman’s a crime victim. And there’s no better place for the unaccountable to do dirt to the accountable than the ‘net.
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