MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Daniel Kinahan and Mounir Lazzez: What Should MMA Media Do?

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

Luke Thomas is here to break down Mounir Lazzez's post fight interview where Mounir shouted out Daniel Kinahan. What is MMA Medias role in this? How should this be handled? Luke Breaks it all down. Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is the media's role when UFC welterweight Munir Lezzez praises Daniel Kinahan in a broadcast on ESPN after he won a UFC fight and praises Kinahan for support, friendship, a few other generalities? What would be the media's role there? Should they do nothing? Should they go crazy? What should it be? This was going to be the odds and ends on regular morning combat. I'm Luke Thomas. I'm one half of morning combat. Brian Campbell, of course, is the other half. I decided to make a bit of a separate video for it so that we could delve into it a little bit more and have a bit of a more forthright, and I hope, productive conversation. Because there is a big gap I have seen between what the media sees as its responsibility and what a lot of other folks in MMA sees as the media's responsibility. And there's not a lot of alignment on this particular story, which is somewhat surprising, but it is at least worth considering.

Now, I'm not going to get into all the details of the story. If you would like to know more about Daniel Kinahan, I'll put a couple links to the story below, but you can simply Google him. Same with Munir Lezez, who has had a good career up to this point, but this is the first time he's been involved in something like this, at least in a very global and straightforward kind of way. But the basic idea would be as follows. Kinahan is believed to be basically an Irish mobster, certainly an Irish national living in Dubai. Just last week, the US government announced that they were offering a $5 million reward for anything that led to his arrest or capture or disruption of a group that they say he is the head of, the Kinahan Organized Crime, or KOCG. Now, Kinahan also have long time believed to have been involved in an organization called MTK, which does a lot of shows.

It's a promotional company. They sign fighters as well. There are a couple of, actually several UFC fighters on the roster with them. A lot of special boxers as well. Darren Till, most notably in UFC, as well as Tyson Fury over in the boxing side of things. But there are many others as well. But this story doesn't really pertain to that. It's not so much about that, although there are some other related parts. But just for this story and this video, I just want to focus on what the media's role is here

and whether or not the conduct you saw in their coverage of it, including Alan Dawson and some other folks, whether or not that was appropriate. Now, let me actually first start with a bit of an olive leaf. Every time the media does something in MMA that is sort of seen as controversial, outside its purview, not what it's supposed to be doing, it's not like those criticisms are utterly baseless. I want to be very clear about this. I'm not here to disparage my colleagues because I think in many cases they are doing the best job that they can. And certainly they're often, most times, just sitting out to do the job they were charged to do.

But it's not also to say that there aren't meaningful, fair, real criticisms of MMA media coverage. I do believe that at times, and certainly I've been guilty of some of this along the way, there's been too much where a conversation is about one thing that is strictly not political and there's been political infusion as a result I think that's a real genuine claim you could make I was having a discussion on Twitter with Kareem Zidane who you know does the probably the most thankless job real journalism in MMA and he and I were sort of going back and forth about our theories about why MMA media is the way that it is and in terms of just not really being a very significant arm of actual news and looking into things. It used to be a little bit better, but even then it has never really been all that great.

And I'm going to borrow a couple of his reasons, a couple of his, and then I'll introduce one of mine. But it would basically be, one, UFC policies have basically put pressure on journalists and their outlets to cater the kind of coverage that they do. And it's been a long shadow that they have cast. I think I have personally never really suffered from this. I want to be very clear about it. But there's a lot of people who have. So it's a legitimate thing to worry about. Number two, I would say simply a lot of media have acted in a way where they have sent the wrong impression about what they do to viewers or readers.

And so they get a distorted view of what the job is. It is why I assiduously do not call myself a journalist anymore. Sometimes I get labeled that way, but I really don't believe that I am. And I take that label away because I think if you're going to call yourself that, you have to do a very specific kind of work. And it's just not what I do. I think any person can take on a journalistic act. If you're at an event and you pull out your phone and you're filming it and you talk to someone on the scene, that's journalism. By any other measurement, that's what that is. So anyone is capable of it. But I think if you're going to give yourself a title, you have to have a certain

guardrails around what you do and buddying up to fighters and just going to press conferences and asking questions and whether the fans boo or cheer, that's got nothing to do with the job so that's the other part I think that there's been a lot of surrender to the real responsibilities and a mislabeling of a lot of folks but the third thing I would say is and this is where I would really give the MMA media a break and a lot of folks don't understand this most of the places that hire most of the people you see are not at all interested in MMA journalism. They're not interested in, I mean, a little bit.

They're interested in the ad rev and then the clicks, and that typically comes, not exclusively, but often through access. And so, I understand that these companies are not putting these guys in a position to make a lot of waves. Now, when I say not make a lot of waves, way more than the critics of the media in this story would

ever expect, but certainly not 60 Minutes or Frontline or whatever news magazine show you want to talk about. They're not set out to do that kind of thing in general. And so the corporations are not really empowering them. The major dominant organization in the sport is, at least has historically, historically made things difficult. And then there is some individual responsibility to bear. So if you want to say, well, I've got a lot of issues with MMA media and I've lost a lot of trust in them. Believe me, I understand that. Believe me, I get it.

I think a lot of it is totally fair. And so that's going to color this entire discussion. A person, B person does not like the MMA media or does not trust them or whatever for any number of reasons that could be quite legitimate over the years. And now they have got such a negative reaction that there's really no middle ground possible. I don't know what to do in cases like that. But if you are at least amenable to argument, I would like to make you one. That's what I want to do.

I want to give you an argument, and you can like the argument, you can hate it, you can say it's good or you can say it's bad, but that's all that I really want to do with here, which is why I started with the question, what is the media's role as it relates to covering an athlete at an event like this who says something in the way that he said? And the answer is, there's a few different ways you could do it depending on what you do, but asking more broadly, you know, what should the media do? Well, I don't know what a cameraman should do. I don't know what a sound guy should do. And I don't know what the social media person should do necessarily without some direction from the editor. But let's speak from the editor's position here. Let's speak

from the guy who is expected to have some news judgment. I'll raise my hand here and say I was an editor at two of the most prominent websites in all of MMA. I was editor-in-chief of Bloody Elbow and I was a deputy editor at MMA Fighting. I also had radio shows, national and local. Obviously, I have the gigs that I have now. I had a television gig before, and now I have this sort of digital one with Showtime and CBS Sports. I've done a lot in the business, and I've talked to a lot of editors. I've talked to a lot of program directors.

I've talked to a lot of producers about what counts as newsworthiness. Ladies and gentlemen, this story of a UFC fighter praising a guy who the US government has just labeled as basically a crime boss is in every way a newsworthy story. What makes for newsworthiness? You can look this up on your own. By all means, please do not take my word for it. There's always a few factors that go into it. It's never a hard and fast kind of set of rules, but there are some guidelines. One, timeliness, like when did this story happen? If it's recent, that would be better, but not always. But certainly you can imagine that getting to the bottom of recent events would be important. Proximity, did this happen to people that we know? How many people far away? In this case, it was on TV, on ESPN, in the most dominant MMA organization, talking about a guy in the most dominant MMA organization,

talking about a guy that the U.S. government just named as a crime boss. Like, this is direct proximity in every way. You could talk about the impact that the story might have. That's the way some people go. How many people does it involve, right? Is this a story about one person? That doesn't make it not newsworthy in this, but let's say you had, this is a common example, let's say you had a plane crash right and a hundred people were killed or something

that would make the story even of greater significance so how many people are affected now certainly you have the individuals i've just mentioned but if we're talking about someone who is alleged to have done crimes and then they have those crimes uh him being normalized inside of a sport would have massive effects for any of the potential victims or more broadly these other entities. So you're involving a lot of people that are actually not just big in number, although they could be big in number two, but highly important ones as well, right? We're involving now Disney and ESPN and UFC and a lot of other figures. So you have a lot of prominent figures as well. And you can go on down the list of a few other things that folks look to in a story like this. It meets every

guideline. Let me explain some to you. If I was an editor and I had sent someone to go cover events and they were not a cameraman or something else where it's sort of like a very specific kind of gig, but they were the journalist, they were credentialed and they didn't cover this, I would never use them again. Of any story you might cover outside of the fights themselves, this would be number one, and it meets every single criteria you could possibly imagine. Now, I understand what folks might be saying, which is, well, it has no impact on my life. My life as a fan is utterly not impacted.

That's a fair response, actually. I don't think that's a crazy response, but the media's role is not to figure out, okay, if Jeff in Wyoming is not affected, does that mean I shouldn't cover it? If you're affecting people or entities that are of significant interest or value or scope, Disney being one of them, ESPN being one of them, UFC being one of them, then it is, of course, quite relevant. Now, I believe that the story is unimpeachably relevant and should be covered. Now, there's a question of like, how far do you go? Do you go as far as what Alan Dawson did to get answers? I will tell you, I think a lot of folks are not used to seeing that kind of journalism in MMA, but this is pretty much

quite common. In fact, what I would say is, and this was kind of funny, this is how you can tell critics of a lot of, I should say, a lot of critics of MMA media have not watched a lot of other sports because the MMA media, with all of their problems and all of the fair criticisms, is relative to NBA or NFL, especially NFL, or other sports, stick and ball sports media, they are by far the kindest to the athletes. That isn't to say that they are kind, yet perhaps you find them quite loathsome. This isn't to say that they are in every way unimpeachable. What I'm telling you is, if you think MMA media is criticism, you haven't seen anything. They are significantly more critical of both athletes and institutions in regular sports than they are in this one.

So, you know, this idea that like MMA media is too harsh is it's like, by what standard is that true? By other sports standards, it's obviously not true. I have seen folks say, well, it's this sort of leftist introduction to politics, but I really, I wonder what the source of that thinking is other than just general media antipathy. Let me give you a counterexample. I realize this is not in any way what Kinahan is accused of doing, but if Jeffrey Epstein was still alive and he was funding fighters, one, two, three, four, five of them, and a fighter got on TV and praised him, would this be acceptable to you?

Would this be something you would not want the MMA media to ask? Can you imagine if the MMA media did not ask about something like that? Now, I grant that's not the charge he is facing. So you're like, well, that's different. That would be child predation or something like that. Okay, fine. But the point I'm trying to make here is the only moral reasoning that has happened by the media and the only moral introduction that they have made is that this is somebody

who is wanted by the law and is accused of murder and accused of or being parts of murders or accused of serious theft and other crimes. If you can't operate from a position that at least treating that as serious and worthy of inspection is a real possibility for you. If you can't treat that as something that you can cover, then you can't cover anything. If the basic moral inclination that, yes, what that person has been accused of is not in any way a fact, they would have to be captured and tried and everything else. These are very serious accusations with very serious amounts of evidence that have been put forward.

They are wanted by multiple world governments. We are not talking about fringe actors here. Introducing the new McSpicy from McDonald's. It looks like a regular chicken sandwich, but it's actually a spicy chicken sandwich. McSpicy, consider yourself warned. Limited time only at participating McDonald's in Canada. If you can't even start from an operating assumption that that's a bad thing and that they're wanted by the law is probably a very serious thing, you couldn't have media. And I know what the response to that is, which is, well, yes, you could. We just talk about the fights. Just talk about the fights.

Folks, if you just cover the fights, you are not covering the sport. You are only covering the fights. That's it. The sport also should be covered. There are good actors in the sport. There are bad actors in the sport. And the public has a right to know about either of them. There are good things that happen outside of the fights. There are bad things that happen outside of the fights. The public has a right to know about all of them. And by the way, that isn't even true that you want folks to cover just the fights because what you also want are all the stories and the interviews and the feature pieces that make the fighters you like the most look even better. So if you just wanted us to cover the fights, you would get all of the things that you actually like and think is real media also taken away.

What basically folks want from the media, and again, part of this is their own undoing, is they just want the media to act like professional fans in the way that fans might act. I like this person. I like that fight. I love this organization. I don't like these other ones. Magnify these preferences and feed them back to me. That's where a lot of this stems from in addition to all of the fair criticisms that are out there. And so I don't know what you're supposed to do with that. I don't know where you're supposed to, if you're media, what are you supposed, how are you supposed to interpret any of this in any kind of serious way? What would be

the serious argument that there is no place for that kind of coverage in the sport. I would love to hear it. If you have one, you can email me, lukethomasnews at gmail.com. You can put an argument for it below. What would be a better conception of what media coverage at MMA looks like? Which, by the way, is a very helpful and good conversation to have. But make the argument that a crime lord, an alleged crime lord, wanted by the U.S. government, along with many other places, accused of doing serious crimes, legitimate, very serious crimes, is praised by a professional athlete on the biggest sports network in North America. Make the claim that that's not a story, but that all the things that you like that are utterly frivolous, that that's really the important stuff.

I would love to see it. I would love to see it. You can make all kinds of criticisms about MMA media that I would find probably pretty good. I cannot think of a coherent way to structure a real kind of media coverage that jettisons and repudiates the idea that crime bosses being shouted out by professional athletes alleged crime bosses is outside the purview but fight coverage and then let's call it the it's basically working as a de facto pr arm of the fighters that that's there's nothing wrong with that but that's that should lead the coverage except that you only want us to cover the fight so that's gone too i don't i don't know how this is supposed to work if you if you listen to my live chat if you listen to mk you all know about my political preferences i don't hide them from you i i make i i believe that you can make

it a more informed decision about the kind of coverage you get and where you should get it if people like me in these positions journalist journalists, media, whatever they are, are at least honest with you about their preferences. I don't hide my preferences. I'm honest with you. I absolutely do have left-leaning politics. There's simply no denying it, nor am I trying to deny it. And you should take that into consideration in however you view this coverage or any other

coverage. It should in some way impact your judgment. It should also impact all the things I've said. That should be an impact as well. But this to me feels like a very basic moral reasoning test. It doesn't feel like it's a whole lot more than that. If we cannot even be in a place where something like this is reported on and the athletes asked about it in a very professional setting he wasn't hounded outside in the alleyway no one followed Munir Lizes not

that they would ever do that but you get the idea this was a professional setting he was asked questions as a credentialed member of the media if even that is outside the purview of what we're supposed to be doing here um then we we shouldn exist, is really the end of the story there. Journalists, media, whatever, the entire umbrella, they shouldn't exist. If what you really want is that gone, then what you want is for powerful people to just do whatever they want. That's a world where might makes right. This is not to oversell the nobility of media.

It's not. But it is supposed to serve as one kind of thing, if nothing else, that bad actors, when at all possible, do not get a place to hide because no one is willing to say what the truth is. But here's the thing. I work inside of a sport where very few people share my preferences politically. And I just have to accept that. And I have. I have accepted that I'm going to be, in terms of the worldview, the minority the vast majority of the time. I recognize that. And that's

why I think it's important that on this video, I at least make an argument to you about why this story appears to be different to me. But I would also say, if what you're looking for from media is just to have your values repeated back to you, you are not interested in media. You are just interested in having your worldview affirmed and your ego stroked. That's not what the media is there for. It could at times happen that the media will spit back something to you that in fact does all of that, in which case, great. But a lot of times, reality doesn't work that way.

And of course, we're dealing with things that are alleged and a lot of things that are unknown. But as I've been over before, this story passes every newsworthiness test and then some. So there's a little bit of reflection, I think, that should be happening everywhere. Part of this and the reason why there's been such a strong reaction is I think the MMA media has not taken into account

its failures. I also think on the other side that there is a little bit of basic moral decency that is required to do the job and a little bit of basic moral reasoning to do the job which folks wrongly assume to be some kind of introduction into woke politics. Deciding that murder and theft is bad and that done at

a grand scale is bad and that people who have alleged to have done it who are wanted by several world governments doesn't make anything they've done fact but it certainly makes them potentially dangerous and certainly a very serious matter worthy of a lot more consideration and a lot more introspection and a lot more investigation than has been done that's the job you can like that you can hate that that's the job