This semester, our class has been reading and discussing So You've Been Publicly Shamed and looking at different scenarios where public shaming has been prevalent. Public shaming is something that is definitely more common now that it has been in the past because of how easy it is to hide behind a screen and tweet along with the masses. One that I found to be interesting was a scandal in 2003 with a Chicago Cubs fan. Steve Bartman went to a Cubs game like any other fan and during the game a ball was hit into the crowd. When he went up to catch it, he ended up deflecting it back on to the field turning it into a foul ball. The Cubs ended up losing the game and Cubs fans believed it was because of Steve Bartman, so they began playing the video over and over again on television news channels. Within 24 hours people had released all of personal information and were sending him threats and leaving him frightening phone calls. He apologized, but had to go into hiding because of the death threats he was receiving over a baseball game. I think that for this the news channels were trying to make drama out of something that shouldn't have been news worthy, but it was because the Cubs lost that game that they had a story. For them the audience was sports fans, Cubs fans, and the Cubs themselves. I think that this while situation could have been fixed had the news stories not had the video of him deflecting the ball playing over and over again on news channels and I also think that unless Steve Bartman knew that he was for sure going to be able to catch the ball, that he probably shouldn't have attempted to catch it. I think that this situation was restored to the best of its abilities when the Cubs invited him to the stadium and other games as a VIP member, but at the end of the day they still blasted him to the media. I think that this is different from some of the stories in the book because most of those stories were one's where the subject was the one that also caused the harm and put thought into the issue. The Sacco story, for example, could have been avoided had she just not tweeted about her trip to Africa. I think that whole situation could have been avoided if she had just thought about what she was tweeting before she tweeted it. This is different from the Bartman story because the shaming was caused by her, she brought some of the shaming on herself whereas Bartman just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think that the Bartman issue was a continuous topic for the Cubs until 2016 when they gave him a World Series ring once they finally won one.
2 Comments
Madeline Woodward
11/14/2018 12:50:58 pm
I appreciate your perspective on this particular "scandal". It makes me consider how little attention is paid to the livelihood of a single person when the news is involved. For the news platforms, it's more important to keep their numbers and viewers up than it is to regard someone's personal safety. This disturbs me. We are willing to make HUGE news out of something so insignificant when there are plenty of stories worthy of news coverage that are completely ignored.
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Anna Bates
11/14/2018 01:02:32 pm
This scandal was kind of unconventional and I really liked it. I think you displayed the dramatic shift that happens when the media gets ahold of anything that can be made out to be controversial. Obviously, this man was not really at fault (it was purely an accident) and yet he was still blamed and received death threats for something that was in no way morally wrong. This was really interesting to read and you developed the scandal well by contrasting it with the Sacco story.
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