Rob Gronkowski’s time machine is a story about media bias

Time Machine poster

 

The sports meets pop culture part of the Internet jumped on New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski this week for not understanding what time travel is. I disagree with the consensus that Gronk is wrong about what time travel is, but I found the dust-up fascinating as a journalist, not as a physicist, which I am decidedly not.

Gronk has a media reputation as a bro’s bro, a good-natured, fun-loving lunkhead. The iconic Gronk momentcame after the Patriots won the AFC Championship Game in January 2012: An ESPN Deportes reporter asked him, in Spanish and then English, if he would be celebrating the victory, and Gronk said, “Si. Yo soy fiesta.” That moment becoming iconic is another blog post.

This week Pats radio announcer Scott Zolak asked Gronkowski what superpower he’d like to have. He said he wished he had a time machine, so that “I could just be like, ‘I want to be in Florida right now,’ and then boom, I’m in Florida.”

Boom. The snark was unleashed, including by my outfit, Bleacher Report. Here are some headlines:

Rob Gronkowski Wants to Time Travel to Florida, Doesn’t Know How Time Works (Bleacher Report)

Rob Gronkowski doesn’t understand the concept of time machines (SB Nation)

Rob Gronkowski Thinks Planes And Cars Are Time Machines (Deadspin)

Here’s Deadspin’s Samer Kalaf:

Gronk doesn’t understand how time works. Or maybe he doesn’t know what a plane is. Either way, it’s concerning. Does he know what happens when he gets on the big metal bird to go to away games?

Clearly the consensus view of this situation is that if you’re in Boston and then you instantaneously show up in Florida, that is not time travel. It’s just travel. Several people took the time to patiently spell this out to me on Twitter. Zolak helpfully informed Gronk that he was talking about a “transporter,” not a time machine. Keep in mind neither of these things exist.

I think that’s a valid viewpoint, but what’s interesting to me is that it’s a viewpoint, a perspective. It’s a way of looking at the world, specifically a way of thinking about time.

I believe it’s not the only valid way of thinking about time. It’s not how I think about time. I think that if you have a machine that does nothing to change the distance from Boston to Miami Beach—Gronk means Miami Beach when he says “Florida,” don’t you think?—but reduces the time it takes to cover that distance from several hours to zero seconds, your machine is very much about time. I think it’s fair to say that a plane is a kind of time machine.

If you don’t agree, I don’t want to debate the point. I’m just saying there are different ways of thinking about “time.” Your way of thinking about it is cool with me.

From all the evidence—the articles and the amen chorus in the comments section and on social media—the people who don’t look at time the way I do don’t think of their point of view as a point of view. They think of it as a fact. What Gronk talked about? “That’s not a time machine.” Fact.

That’s where I get interested as a journalist, because as a journalist, I was taught to be “objective,” which is to say without bias. I, like many, have long since rejected this practice, the purpose of which is for journalists to claim they have no bias. NYU professor and media thinker Jay Rosen calls this “the view from nowhere.”

See the parallel? You can’t not have a bias. How you think about something as seemingly fundamental and fact-based as how time works can be affected by who you are and what culture you’re a part of. “That’s not a time machine” might sound pretty weird to anyone who hadn’t grown up hearing that air travel had “shrunk the world.” As opposed to, say, “slowed down the clock.” I’ve been hearing about how “the world is much smaller now,” thanks to faster travel and communication, for as long as I can remember.

I’m not saying the consensus view—”That’s not a time machine”—is incorrect, in the way that 2+2=47 is incorrect. I’m saying it’s an opinion, a viewpoint, not a factual statement. It’s like saying “A true friend is someone who wouldn’t let you root for the New England Patriots.” A valid way to look at the world. Just not a fact.

But the snarkosphere treated “That’s not a time machine” as a factual statement, because the default way of thinking about time in Western culture in 2013 is so ingrained, so agreed-upon, that it feels to most people in that culture like the only way to think about time.

What else in our consensus worldview is like that? What other opinions and points of view do we think of as facts? That’s a central question in journalism, and one I believe every journalist should be asking all the time: Is that a fact, or an agreed-upon viewpoint?

Wall Street Journal feeds the “small ball” myth

Noted smallball enthusiast Vladimir Guerrero stretches out before a regular-season game. He's 0-for-1 stealing in the World Series.
Noted smallball enthusiast Vladimir Guerrero stretches out before a regular-season game. He's 0-for-1 stealing in the World Series.

Another example of why putting our faith in the established, trusted brands of the mainstream media because they are the established, trusted brands of the mainstream media is not the brightest idea.

Here is a Wall Street Journal piece headlined “Hitting Baseballs, Just Not as Far: Giants and Rangers Win With Contact Hitting, Bunts and Baserunning; the ‘Lost Arts.'” The piece, by Matthew Futterman and Brian Costa, explains that the Giants and Rangers have gotten to the World Series via “the kind of aggressive baserunning and timely, intelligent situational hitting and bunting that younger fans, the ones who came of age during baseball’s era of jet propulsion, have rarely seen.”

“Jet propulsion” refers to the home-run-happy steroids era, “a time when the chief ingredient of a winning team was a pack of happy oafs whose job was to hit the baseball into the next Congressional district.”

To prove their point, the Journal writers — well, they wave their arms around a lot.

The numbers tell the story rather starkly. Last year, the teams in the World Series — the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Yankees, ranked first and third in the majors in home runs. The Rangers and Giants rank No. 10 and No. 11.

San Francisco was 17th in runs scored and 13th in slugging percentage this season. But they ranked fifth in strikeouts and third in sacrifice bunts in the National League and fourth in all of baseball in sacrifice hits. [Snip: A couple of quotes from Cody Ross and Brian Sabean, respectively, about how the Giants take good swings and “know how to compete.” ]

Texas was only ninth in slugging percentage, but the team had the most sacrifice bunts in the American League, the second-most sacrifice flies and the fourth fewest strikeouts. The Rangers were also seventh in the majors in stolen bases.

So how well does a certain ranking in runs scored or slugging percentage or sacrifice flies or stolen bases correlate with winning? We don’t get much of a clue, except that the Yankees and Phillies were first and third, which is actually wrong. They were first and tied for second. The Phillies tied for second with the Rangers, who didn’t make the playoffs. In 2008 the Phillies were second in homers and went to the Series, where they played the Tampa Bay Rays, who were tied for ninth.

In 2007 the Boston Red Sox, 18th in home runs, beat the Colorado Rockies, 15th, despite both teams playing their home schedule in homer-friendly parks. In 2000, the height of the supercharged steroid era, when major leaguers hit more home runs than in any other year in history, the World Series pitted the Yankees, 10th in homers, and the New York Mets, 12th.

We’re really in a new era here, where you don’t have to lead the league in homers to make the World Series! Like you did in 2009!

But don’t listen to me. Here’s Cybermetrics, “the sabermetric blog of Cyril ‘Cy’ Morong, professor of economics at San Antonio College,” responding to the Journal piece by pointing out that all that sacrificing and stealing and not hitting home runs and so on is not resulting in any extra runs or wins for either the Giants or the Rangers.

Using these crazy things called history and math, Morong shows that teams that get on base and slug at the rates the Giants and Rangers do tend to score about as many runs as the Giants and Rangers did this year. And he points out that, given their pitching — a concept the Journal barely nods toward, though it’s basically the whole story for the Giants — teams that score as many runs as the Giants and Rangers did this year can be expected to win just about as many games as they did.

In other words: “There are no extra wins due to using ‘lost arts.’ In fact, they have done well by some combination of hitting for power and getting on base and generally preventing their opponents from doing so. This is a time honored way of winning.”

The Journal piece concludes with a quote from Giants president Larry Baer, who is a business man, not a baseball man: Baer “said there is more passion for this team than any in his 18 years with the organization. ‘It validates that this game is an art and not a science,’ he said.”

Except it doesn’t validate that. The team’s popularity might validate that marketing is an art, or that a city’s passion for a team involves some strange, hard-to-fathom alchemy. But there’s plenty of science involved in the baseball.

The Giants would do well to understand that science a little better. If they did, they wouldn’t owe Barry Zito — not good enough to make the postseason roster — $64.5 million over the next four years. They wouldn’t owe Aaron Rowand — worthy of eight plate appearances in 15 postseason games — $24 million over the next two years. The people who do understand the science and root for the Giants screamed their heads off over both of those signings.

The Journal could do a better job of it too. You know, like some blogger in his mother’s basement an economics department in San Antonio.

Photo: Benson!!/Flickr Creative Commons

The TV lottery ticket

A tweet from NBC reporter Ann Curry:

Ann Curry tweet
Ann Curry tweet

Here’s the text you get when you “share” the video report Curry’s tweeting about:

Overwhelming response to Dateline’s poverty report

A development to the story we brought you about struggling families in Ohio who have been pushed over the edge by this recession. ††There’s been a response from people wanting to help.

http://bit.ly/btt50h

So it’s that old TV thing. NBC does a story on “Dateline” about families struggling through the recession in rural Ohio, and letters and donations and job offers come pouring in from all over the country.

The retired Air Force vet has “job offers in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Arizona, Iowa.” Someone sent him $5,000. A woman reads through tears from a letter she’s received: “In a couple of weeks I will be able to send you some money to help with expenses. I hope this letter raises your spirits and that you know I really do care. Most of all, you have a friend in me. You are going to be OK, and so are your children. I will be thinking of you, sweetie, and praying that lots of other people send you much-needed money.”

She says, “It’s really hard to believe that someone you’ve never met could actually care that much.”  

The food pantry lady has gotten 500 phone calls and donations from Texas, California, Florida, Iowa, Massachusetts, Maine, Canada. She says, “I just cant even describe how good it feels to know that there are so many people out there that really do care.”

This is absolutely par for the course, it’s what happens every single time there is a sob story on the TV, but here’s the thing: People don’t care. They just respond to what’s on television.

There are folks right down the street in Texas, California, Florida and Iowa who need food and basic supplies. There are good, capable people, some of them retired military, right down the street in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Arizona and Iowa who are looking for work. And after NBC’s report those people still need the basics and are still looking for work. And those people who sent the heartfelt letters and the donations and the job offers likely never moved a muscle for those people down the street.

A guy who drove to the food pantry with a Hefty bag of donations tells the food pantry lady, “Cincinnati Ohio’s thinkin’ of ya,” and she gives him a big hug. Really, guy who drove 170 miles to Lottridge to find someone to give your Hefty bag of stuff to? Because where were you and the rest of Cincinnati before NBC aired its report?

Waiting for food -- or a TV camera -- in Denver.
Waiting for food -- or a TV camera -- in Denver.

Curry, who is among the best in the business and whom I don’t mean to beat up on, gets “a smile” out of this, as she should. She did a good piece about people who are struggling, her viewers responded in overwhelming fashion and the people she reported about are deeply moved by their good fortune.

If you focus in tightly enough, it really is a wonderful thing. That relatively tiny group of people in Ohio actually did get a lot of help they weren’t going to get without that TV report. It was like a little miracle, and you’d have to have a hard heart indeed not to be touched by the young mom reading the letter or the hard-working food pantry lady who is suddenly able to provide so much more help to so many more people. I love America too.

But back your view out to the larger picture and what you see is something much more depressing.

Obviously, the people who sent money and goods and job offers had both the means and willingness to help their neighbors in need, but instead they helped some people they saw on TV. Now, I suppose it’s possible that every one of them, from the donor of $5,000 to the Hefty bag guy from Cincinnati to the job offerers in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Arizona and Iowa, are doing just as much for lots of other people closer to home and not on the TV.

I would just be willing to bet a lot that they aren’t.

What Curry’s story suggests is that the generosity of the American people can solve the problems of a lot of folks who need help — as long as they can get on TV. Getting on TV is a lottery ticket, and the depressing part of it is that if you’re in trouble, your chances of getting on TV are about the same as your chances of winning the lottery.

What about all the desperate people who didn’t have a TV network drop out of the sky into their local food pantry? How do we turn their story into “a smile”? Because there are clearly people out there willing to help. There just isn’t enough TV to go around.

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Photo by Jeffrey Beall, Creative Commons license.