Written by Brian McPeek

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Those of you who read me (or who employ me) understand that I rarely work or write with a plan. I pretty much look at the three Cleveland sports teams and maybe the Buckeyes and go off on whatever tangent I may have for a given article. I write a lot of stuff from an emotional perspective of a fan, like you, who may have witnessed what I’m writing about only a few minutes before spilling out my thoughts on the matter. That's how I do it and that's how I deal with what seems like zipper punch after zipper punch with the teams I follow.

This week’s ‘Wrap’ is a bit different.

I’m still going to riff briefly on all of the Cleveland teams and give the briefest of synopsis on each, but we’re obviously at the end of an extraordinary week following Monday’s explosion at the Boston Marathon and the resulting manhunt afterward that ended Friday night.

I want to talk about that a bit not so much because of the actual event or the tragic nature of the event, but because I’m embarrassed to be the owner of a journalism degree in this day and age of ‘journalism’. What’s going on with the media’s never ending pursuit of speed over accuracy is disgusting. That was clear multiple times this week. And on a more local front, the media here in Cleveland is a perfect illustration of why the old guard is either dead or dying and why that’s probably a really good thing.

First…

The Cavs fired Byron Scott after another shitty Cavaliers season.

Why? No one seems to know other than it’s because the Cavs brass isn’t thrilled with the number of wins and is less thrilled with the defensive intensity the team exhibited under Scott. At the press conference announcing the firing Chris Grant gushed about the individual development of Kyrie Irving, Dion Waiters and Tristan Thompson. So it’s hard to understand based on individual player development what the organization’s issues were exactly. Did Scott lose the team or the respect of Irving? Again, hard to say given the team was lost when it was put together by Grant and Irving misses only slightly fewer games than Boobie Gibson so he wasn’t around much to ask.

Never mind that Scott was the choice of this regime after Mike Brown was fired for Brown not being imaginative enough offensively and for not winning multiple titles while LeBron was here. No one was sad when the dull and unimaginative Brown was let go and a lot of fans and media people were glad to see Scott hired.

So, naturally, the Cavs are reportedly very interested in hiring Mike Brown as their head coach. To instill some defensive toughness into this Cavaliers team, it's said.

Yes, the Cavs want to hire the guy they fired to replace the guy they hired to replace that guy three years ago. In other words, they hired Byron Scott because he wasn't Mike Brown, fired him for not being Mike Brown and now are apparently in the process of replacing him with Mike Brown, who, the Cavs believe, is apparently much more like Mike Brown than Byron Scott is. I think...

It’s a GD soup sandwich over there in Independence. But somewhere in hell George Streinbrenner and Billy Martin just exchanged fist bumps.

It’s Early, Dammit!!

Just keep telling yourself that over and over about the Indians. Repeat it until you believe it.

And then make sure you don’t look at the last couple of years of Ubaldo Jimenez and Scott Kazmir. Don’t look at Justin Masterson’s 2012 nor the mediocre numbers Zack McAllister has put up everywhere. Because then you’ll have to try and tell yourself all over again that it’s early as opposed to potentially just giving in to the notion that the Indians pitchers blow.

Who has that kind of time?

Let’s just say this: if you’re surprised by the Indians pitching then you haven’t been paying much attention the past few seasons.

This staff even made a 14-0 lead on Saturday against the pathetic Astros seem to be insufficient. One moment it was 14-0 and the next it was 14-6. The veteran Kazmir, even if it was his first start after injury rehab, couldn’t get a win out of a 14-0 lead after 1 ½ innings. Hell, he couldn’t get out of the 4^th inning. Thankfully the offense kept scoring and the bullpen was better, but for a moment there you wondered whether a 23-21 loss would have ended this Tribe season in April.

Meh…it’s early, dammit. And they did just take two out of the three from an Independent League team wearing Houston Astros uniforms this weekend.

Good Thing…

Browns owner Jimmy Haslam is a Tennessee Volunteer fan. He probably won’t feel all that out of sorts when he’s wearing a bright orange jumpsuit down the road.

Innocent until proven guilty and all that, but it doesn’t bode well for Jimmah when the feds raid his corporate headquarters. That’s no drill and no fact-finding mission. Those boys knew what they were looking for, who they wanted to isolate from each either and what evidence they wanted to preserve.

So, there’s a decent chance that if you were not at all thrilled with Haslam taking control, Joe Banner being brought in as President and Mike Lombardi being hired as Director of Player Personnel, well, you might not have to put up with this regime for long.

And hey, hell of a process the NFL has in place to endure their prospective owners aren’t likely criminals. Good job, good effort NFL.

I Hate Boston…

Seriously, I detest the town’s sports teams. I cannot stand Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, I hated the ‘Cowboy Up’ Kevin Millar Red Sox and still can’t stand Dustin Pedroia (though I’d take one Pedroia to ten Asdrubal Cabreras),  and the Patriots smug way of conducting themselves (when they aren’t violating NFL rules and spying on other teams) makes me wretch.

That said, I’m not sure if the city and the authorities in Boston could have possibly handled the situation surrounding the marathon bombings any better. While all others in the media and among the general public were losing their shit with baseless accusations based on half-assed suppositions, the city officials and the joint investigative task forces that were set up to find and bring down the responsible parties went about their business efficiently, effectively and with as much professionalism, dignity and respect as any investigation and response has ever seen.

Feed...

Keep that in mind, what I said up there. Do not ever forget how the city, the citizens, the state and federal officers called in and the local cops, firefighters and EMTs handled this situation. You saw it with your own eyes as well as I did. And I tell you lock away those thoughts because now it will all start to be torn apart while politics are played and agendas are established.

And the amusing part in all of that is that it will be the media that’s at the center of tearing apart the city and officials and the response to the explosions. It will be the media calling someone in government or law enforcement on the carpet for not seeing, 26 yr old Tamerlan Tsarnaev as having the capacity for this type of violence when the FBI interviewed him in 2011 at the recommendation of the Russian government.

Yes, the fourth estate will do everything from question the safety procedures in place for the race itself to the FBI’s handling of the older Tsarnaev’s situation to the Mirandizing of the younger suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and they will sensationalize as much of it is necessary to increase ad rates, generate clicks or sell papers and magazines.

And they will conveniently either forget their countless fuck-ups or chalk them up to bad information from ‘trusted sources’.

With exceptions, the media mistakes during this week ranged from willful and wanton to simply careless. The New York Post mistakenly identified a high school student as a bombing suspect. They didn’t retract their story or apologize for it and don’t seem to be concerned about nearly ruining this kid’s life.

On Thursday multiple cable news networks mistakenly announced that an arrest had been made. CNN’s John King was the first guy to have that “news” and the other sheep followed. They were all wrong.

The NY Daily News photo shopped a leg onto a woman whose leg was blown off. The original photo is on the left while the doctored photo is to the right.

I won’t even get into the racial, religious and cultural discrimination issues these mistakes imply and help create although it may ultimately be what those discriminatory issues that kill the media in this country. And I think they’re fat enough to be killed soon.

Technology has made much of the mainstream media obsolete and no one is the poster boy for that any more than The Plain Dealer.

How? Well, no one gives a shit about newspapers any more. You have day old information you’d like to pay money for written by people who haven’t adapted to the new millennium and who are pissy and miserable in their jobs? Awesome…how much can I give you for that crap?

Wait…you’re going to only publish three days a week and it will be opinion-based columns by those same lazy, tired, miserable, hate-their-life-and their-job hacks who were previously writing shitty stories hand-fed to them businesses and organizations attempting to manipulate the messaging? Great!! Because the internet doesn’t have any of that shit for free!!! Sign me up circulation department telemarketer dude who no way in hell works for the actual paper!!

Technology killed the newspapers and the dinosaurs that worked there. For God’s sake, Twitter made television archaic during the marathon. Tweets at 340pm on Monday described an explosion. Tweets immediately afterward described the chaos and the panic. We don’t need CNN and Fox News any more. All we need is us.

We need Twitter and a video feed. That’s it. You can shove Wolf Blitzer back in his coffin and stick him back under the house where he goes to ground. I need video and I need to be made aware a situation exists and the hell with the politically motivated bullshit of each network and their talking heads.

Those people actually offend me with their stupidity and their interjecting themselves into the story. I don’t need them and the authorities responding to a potentially volatile situation surely don’t need them. Not when those idiots need to be told to delay their feeds so they’re not providing bombers and killers of kids (and people potentially harboring and helping those sick, twisted assholes) intelligence and information about police and first responder movements and tactics.

Are you kidding me with that? They need to be told this shit? In this day and age when social media reports beat their reporters and are probably just as accurate?

Where will we get our news?

Don’t laugh, but this is where I think it’s going.

I’m not a sci-fi guy. I’m not a zombie guy. But I read all three of these books and was enthralled not with the story (though it was actually very, very good) but with the post-apocalyptic media, which consists of….bloggers.

A brief overview:

“The year is 2039 and bloggers have taken over the world. Twenty five years ago the Kellis-Amberlee virus went live. Infected humans and animals began reanimating after death--some underwent spontaneous change--to become walking feeding machines. With an appetite for the truth as insatiable as a zombie's diet, Georgia--George--Mason and her brother, Shaun, have climbed the ranks of news bloggers around the world. Their ratings have everything to gain from their recent invitation to join a senator's political campaign. Now they're on the road providing coverage of what's promising to be the campaign trail for the next President of the United States of America. There's only one problem: wherever they go, KA begins breaking out, putting the team at risk. Will they survive to see their candidate win the Republican ticket?”

“How they earn (their) living is very interesting. When established media proved untrustworthy reporting the first outbreak, the world turned to bloggers. Bloggers spoke for the common good--as much to inform themselves as the frightened public. They helped make sense of the unexplained chaos breaking out across the nation. Enter Shaun and Georgia, sponsors willing to fund their efforts, and After the End Times was born. Grant manages to build a convincing news body which isn't too far from the truth. Some people already rely enormously on the internet and trust amateur bloggers for any number of needs. Grant's astute observations integrate this relationship with her own universe to mesh into the working framework of her narrative.”

Honestly, you’d be well-served reading these books not only for a look at the possible future of news, but also because they’re entertaining. But getting back to the first part of that, I do not think it’s difficult at all to see Twitter and bloggers and people with iPhones and video cameras providing us our news.

The cameras and the phones are getting better every day. People involved in the news are already providing that breaking news and reporting from the actual scene only seconds after an event.

I don’t know specifically if we’ve yet had our ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ in terms of when people fully and finally realize and/or decide the main stream media is full of shit and has gone from the fourth estate to pretty much whores for whichever party they or the network they work for happen to align themselves with.

I do know we get closer to that moment every time an event takes place and the mainstream media dangerously puts people’s careers, futures and lives in danger with willful and reckless publishing of erroneous information (and they brazenly refuse to acknowledge it afterward, much less apologize) and when they start publishing doctored photos as though they’re actual photos and not make mention of the fact they’ve been altered.

That is dangerous and dishonest and, to be completely honest as someone who has a BS in Journalism from BGSU, it’s disgusting. It really is. It makes me sick to see these vapid and unintelligible TV personalities who can read and look good but who can’t be nimble enough of mind to use common sense and not potentially get officers and authorities killed while covering something.

Personally I don’t need to know what Brooke Baldwin or John King or Gretchen Carlson or Greta Van Sustern have to say or what they think about a given situation. Give me the pictures and the video and I’ll figure out what to think myself and there’s a hell of a lot smaller chance someone will get hurt or killed in the process.

The day will come, folks. May not be while we’re alive, but the time will come when everyone is a potential news reporter and when you’ll be forced to form your own opinions and impressions. That day can’t get here soon enough if you ask me.

Back to you, Wolf.