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.Mike Paul, the president and senior counselor at MGP & As-sociates public relations in New York said, .he cannot remain silent,out of sight.He should have done a one-on-one interview within thefi rst 24 to 48 hours.He should have done something like Oprah, andhe needs to do it soon. 1MEDIA RESPONSE TO TIGERWhen a celebrity s character is called into question, does it really mat-ter to the general public? Does it matter to the world if Tiger Woodsis cheating on his wife? Clearly, people are interested, but does it haveany effect on their lives? Other than the general disappointment ofthose who have set him up as a role model, the infidelities are a privatematter between Tiger Woods and his wife.However, if the magnitudeof Tiger Woods s image does qualify this story as a legitimate news story,then why didn t any media outlet provide any inkling that Tiger wasnot the family man he professed to be but rather a philandering hus-band? Did the media know about his antics? What about his fellowprofessionals on the PGA Tour?As has been documented in this book, Tiger Woods has had at besta tenuous relationship with the sports press, and the press in general.But because he is arguably the best golfer to have ever played thegame, the media has had to tolerate his lack of forthrightness.WhenEPILOGUE 179he competes in a golf tournament, he is the story, whether he wins ornot.Despite the raging controversy about his personal life, in Decem-ber he was voted the Golf Writers Association Player of the Year 2009,and Athlete of the Decade by the Associated Press.When he is notplaying in a tournament, the television ratings drop by 50 percent, andsponsors are always vying to get him to play in their tournaments.Theaverage cost of a 30-second commercial for the 10 tournaments thatTiger competed in during the 2009 PGA season was 30 percent higherthan the 20 events when he didn t compete.2However, the press, and therefore the public, always wants to knowmore about athletes than their ability to play their sport.They want togain insight into the personality of their stars.Tiger has been notori-ously stingy with any details about his personal life.Observing Tiger inpost-round interviews or press conferences is a study in boredom.Hewould describe every shot of the completed round and what his think-ing was for playing each shot.But any attempt to dig deeper into hispersonal feelings about anything were always short-circuited by Tiger.There was always a tension that someone would ask a question thatwould touch too close to who this athlete really is.Compared to a PhilMickelson press conference, Tiger s  up close and personal abilitieswere sorely lacking.Therefore it is not surprising that when the scandal broke and it be-came apparent that the image of Tiger was not the real Tiger, the mediarelished and embellished the story.And Tiger s refusal to surface andface the media has only damaged his reputation further.It should be pointed out how the relationship between sports report-ers and the athletes they cover has changed significantly over the past40 years.A good example is the mythology that has surrounded thecareer of 1950s golfer Ben Hogan.A description of Hogan s attitude to-ward the press sounds eerily like many contemporary accounts of Tigerand the media:  Hogan, in short, had a different standard on the pressthan any other high profi le players.Byron (Nelson), for example, ap-peared to sympathize with the deadline reporter s plight, often makinghimself available to the press and rarely criticizing the resulting newscopy.Hogan, by contrast, simply couldn t abide anything less thana watchmaker s strict accounting of his words and deeds and found,as a consequence, probing interviews of almost any duration nearly180 EPILOGUEunbearable to take for one simple reason: the more he expressed, themore likely the interviewer was to take his words and use them againsthim. 3 But it was generally the tradition in this period for reporters tosteer clear of the personal lives of the athletes they covered, and conse-quently there was never any indication until long after Hogan s deaththat his  ideal marriage included periods when Ben lived away fromhis wife when they had conflicts.The mainstream media has also had a field day with this story.Evenpeople who knew nothing about the sport of golf knew about TigerWoods.And what they knew was very positive.So when this scandalbroke, many commentators took the opportunity to draw parallels be-tween Tiger s downfall and those of other public people who establishedreputations that were at odds with the real person.Former New Yorkgovernor Eliot Spitzer, ardent fi ghter against corruption as attorneygeneral, got caught frequenting prostitutes; South Carolina governorMark Sanford, a staunch family values Republican, was discovered tohave been carrying on an affair with a woman in Argentina [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]