So, Vince and Linda are NOT getting a divorce? Boy, ya cudda fooled me.
Posted on 02/14/2006 4:50:02 PM PST by Rodney King
osh Stewart-jstewart@longislandpress.com 02/10/2006 11:54 am
Newspaper editors rarely ask potential reporters if they’re up on the latest pro wrestling storylines.
After a recent story in the Boca Raton News, maybe they should.
The paper reported on the alleged misconduct by World Wrestling Entertainment Chairman Vince McMahon, who has been accused by a tanning salon employee of groping her and trying to kiss her late last month in Florida.
But the final line of the story claimed that McMahon was “reportedly” seeking a divorce from his wife, Linda McMahon, the CEO of WWE.
A Press search showed no recent reports about divorce proceedings. As it turns out, the explanation is that the paper mixed up real life and pro wrestling drama.
In late 2000, as part of a storyline, Vince McMahon asked his wife for a divorce on TV after she sided with Long Island native and then-WWE Commissioner Mick Foley on a matchmaking decision. It was all for show and television ratings, but apparently no one at the Boca Raton News knew the difference.
When Boca Raton News Co-Editor John Johnston was contacted by the Press, he noted that his paper wasn’t the only media outlet to make the error. He explained that the reporter who wrote the story had heard the erroneous divorce report from local television stations and included it in his story. He added that the paper would not be running a correction because it’s impossible to define what is real and what isn’t when it comes to wrestling.
“You can do a correction on a fact, not on a farce,” Johnston says.
Such comments irritate Dave Scherer, a reporter and editor with the Pro Wrestling Insider website (www.pwinsider.com), who counters that the attitude a paper takes about a wrestling story often causes it to make errors.
“The problem is that too many reporters in the mainstream media treat wrestling as a joke and therefore don’t fact-check the way that they would for what they consider a ‘real’ story,” Scherer maintains. “It’s pretty obvious to me that they don’t care about their journalistic integrity when they repeatedly ‘report’ information that isn’t true, make no effort to check their facts and then never correct their mistakes after the fact.”
In fairness to the BRN, this isn’t the first time the media has confused reality and ruse as it relates to the squared circle. Mike Mooneyham, a longtime pro wrestling columnist for the Charleston (S.C.) Post & Courier, tells of the time several years ago when the legendary “Nature Boy” Ric Flair was competing for the now-defunct World Championship Wrestling and faked a heart attack as part of a storyline.
“The next day it was widely reported on the local media that Flair had suffered a heart attack,” Mooneyham remembers. “Granted, there wasn’t much time for verification, but the angle was played out so realistically that some of the media bit. One local sports guy here in Charleston did call my house the next evening to corroborate the incident. When my wife told him I was out of town—at a Christmas party with Ric—he knew he had been had.”
Scott Libin, a member of the Leadership & Management Faculty at the Poynter Institute, a journalism school in St. Petersburg, Fla., opines that the Boca Raton News story could have included a more detailed explanation of the divorce report. That could have absolved a reporter no matter how little knowledge he or she had of the grappling profession.
“Journalists should, to the extent they can, confine themselves to objective, verifiable fact,” Libin says. “I can imagine a report that said, ‘In 2000, McMahon said during WWE broadcasts that he and his wife would be getting a divorce, but we can find no court record that he ever took any actual legal steps toward dissolving his marriage.’”
He adds, “Not knowing much about pro wrestling is no excuse for not getting the facts straight.”
Other than a few notable exceptions—like Mooneyham and Alex Marvez of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel—there is a dearth of print reporters in America who have a background covering pro wrestling. So, fans usually have to turn to the few websites that are considered the benchmarks for providing accurate wrestling news (namely, www.pwinsider.com, www.1wrestling.com and www.wrestlingobserver.com).
But those sites have had their hands tied by WWE, which for years has refused to comment to websites because the ’Net journalists often are trying to divulge news about how storylines will progress, and the politics that are going on backstage.
Would it benefit WWE to work closely with these established websites, since with their knowledge of the wrestling business they would likely never make the kind of mistake the media in Florida did?
Mooneyham certainly thinks so.
“[The above sites] are all respectable—and journalistic,” Mooneyham says. “To not acknowledge them as such is a major underestimation on the part of WWE. WWE has tried in recent months to make its own website more ‘inside’ to its fans. And, to an extent, it has.
“But you’ve got to realize that some negative news just won’t see the light of day. And it’s not like most of these wrestling journalists are trying to bury WWE. In most cases, they’re extremely fair. They’re just calling them like they see them. And sometimes the truth hurts.”
So, Vince and Linda are NOT getting a divorce? Boy, ya cudda fooled me.
Now I can finally rest easy.
ping
How much trouble would it be to print a little blurb explaining the storyline situation?,p.they wouldn't even have to really apoligize.
I think y'all are trying to convince me rasslin's fake.
Good luck. You can't fool me. I know real when I see it.
In the 70s I worked at a TV station that recorded "rasslin" every Thurs afternoon for later broadcast on Saturday.
The promoter, out of Memphis, TN, would come in and set up a ring in the studio. About two hours before the taping began, local wrestling fans would begin lining up outside the studio to come in and be the studio audience. There was no charge for this.
There was a little known wrestler whose name I have long forgotten. He was there every week for awhile and always got the crap beat out of him by "Superstar" Bill Dundee, Jerry Lawler, Tommy Rich, etc. He never, ever won a match. The "good guy" would always leave him bloodied and battered in the middle of the ring or crumpled up on the "hard, concrete floor" as the announcers called it.
One Thurs I was in the men's room washing my hands and he came in. We struck up a conversation and I asked him if it bothered him, showing up every week and loosing. He said, "I'm a Pro Wrestler. As long as the check clears, I don't care what happens in the ring."
Interesting.
"Wrestler Stalks, Threatens To Kill, WWE Owner, Makes Him Relieve Himself"
In wrestling, you're the one who gets the money if you get into a fight with a woman.
The media is lazy and elitist.
It doesn't care about getting the story right, as much as it cares about attention.
While this case applies to wrestling, it can and does apply to many many other topics as well.
LOL! I think that was the highpoint of the WWF. They have been in a decline since then. I also thought the time that stone cold took over the CEO spot and went to a meeting in Titan Tower with a briefcase full of beer was good.
Some of the guys at the fire station got hooked on it, and I'd pass through the day room with it on. One day, Hulk Hogan was dressed in black and everyone was booing him. I said, "I thought Hulk Hogan was a good guy." They told me, "No, he's Hollywood Hogan now, and he's a bad guy." From what I understand, good guys and bad guys take turns now. Huh?
I can't imagine someone who wants to be a serious journalist bothering with the WWF, WWE, or whatever they're calling themselves now. I'd rather cover surfing in Nebraska than deal with those clowns. After you wrote one honest story about steroid use, you'd be barred from covering anything, and probably have the cr*p beaten out of you.
Party pooper.
I agree with you that the media is lazy, but why cover a written storyline like it's real? The wrestling guys make money putting on a show. They're whining because outlets won't cover their silly storylines like they cover the NFL. Actually, they don't want NFL coverage, complete with stories about athletes using steroids and getting kicked out over contract disputes, about three wrestlers sharing an apartment to make ends meet because only the top stars get decent money. They don't want to reveal what the actual contract payouts are or how they figure out who will win the next title match based on ratings. They want someone to go to the matches, then write about them as if they were actual sporting events, and they want the coverage in the sports section instead of the entertainment section. They want reporters to do interviews, not with the real performers, but with their characters they're playing on stage. Imagine if you got an assignment to interview Daniel Radcliffe, but when you got there, he was in his Harry Potter robes, and insisted he was really Harry Potter, and did the entire interview as Harry Potter. Then, Warner Brothers insisted that he really was Harry Potter, and you'd better run the interview as "an interview with Harry Potter." That's what pro wrestling wants.
Because this story is real, its an allegation of groping by someone who works in a tanning salon, she isn't a pro wrestler, while McMahon is a wrestling owner and thus a celebrity.
They want reporters to do interviews, not with the real performers, but with their characters they're playing on stage. Imagine if you got an assignment to interview Daniel Radcliffe, but when you got there, he was in his Harry Potter robes, and insisted he was really Harry Potter, and did the entire interview as Harry Potter. Then, Warner Brothers insisted that he really was Harry Potter, and you'd better run the interview as "an interview with Harry Potter." That's what pro wrestling wants.
To be honest with you, I haven't seen anything remotely like that since I was a little kid with pro wrestlers.
"The Rock" gives interviews using his real name, and talks about his marriage and other topics, Hulk Hogan talks about his family and his daughter.
ESPN interviewed these guys totally out of kayfabe.
No one, in 2006 from the WWE is going to do a media interview "in character" unless the reporter really really wants them too, and even then most of them don't want to.
Keep in mind, that it was the WWE that pointed out that the McMahon family isn't divorcing, and that its a storyline, Vince McMahon himself is very fast and quick to point out that his "show" is a television program no different from any other fictional entertainment program and compares his pro-wrestlers with actors quite often.
I probably shouldn't comment on opera threads, either.
Anyway, she did, didn't she?
After seeing some of the idiotic questions asked by reporters with conspiracy theories.
yea.
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