The Josh Innes Show - Terrible Media Coverage Of Celebrity Deaths

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

I don't have a ton of rules as it relates to how to host a radio show or work in the media. Most things have changed so much that rules really don't exist. That said, I do have one very important rule...we don't tease breaking news and we don't tease death. We don't clickbait injury or death. It's tacky and lazy. Octavio Dotel died yesterday and local St. Louis news outlets ran headlines of "Former Cardinals Player Dies"....gotta get those clicks! I don't even know that rules really exist for broadcasters anymore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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different now with social media and like, now it's not just ABC, NBC, CBS, or not just local radio stations. It's not just local television. There's blogs, there's official team blogs and websites. There's Oh, locked locked on blank and everybody's got their own kind of thing and a lot of people who are getting jobs are not like trained media people so like the etiquette has kind of changed and the bar has kind of moved for what is acceptable in the way you cover things whether it be sports or news or whatever it may be I think things have changed a lot and some of that could be for. And some of that could be for the good. Some of that could be for the bad.

And, you know, last week we talked about, or earlier this week, I guess we talked about Pat McAfee and how he talked about this story about the Ole Miss girl who allegedly had sex with her boyfriend's dad and he never mentioned her name or anything, but he talked about it. And now Pat McAfee is the object of everyone's scorn and she wants to sue him and she may sue him and and all this shit right so like the idea of what is acceptable broadcast practices has certainly changed right like i saw a story yesterday or a facebook or was a post on instagram or some gal that's a news reporter, I guess a local TV news reporter somewhere in Florida that covers Florida basketball. And she's filming herself during the end of the

game, which by the way, go fuck yourself. Like, can you, everybody wants to film themselves reacting to shit. You want to know how I know your reaction isn't natural because you're fucking filming yourself. Like again, this is the shit that drives me nuts. I don't care because you're fucking filming yourself like again this is the shit that drives me nuts I don't care that you're on social media I don't care that you film yourself all I'm saying is how how the hell are you giving an organic response to anything if you know you have now deliberately put a camera in your face and you are filming yourself to get the reaction your reaction is bullshit it's the same way that most of these videos that people take when they like throw their TV after their team loses are probably fake because people know they're being filmed and they're trying to go viral. But the one thing this gal says is,

you know, it's hard not to cheer in the press box because I've been covering this team all year. And yes, I understand that you build an allegiance to these guys and I understand that maybe you're even from there so you grew up watching them and the world is just different than it used to be in the way people cover sports like turn on any sports radio station in the country and most of the people on these radio shows are are just kind of piggybacking what the fans feel about things not trying to go against the grain, not really offering legitimate opinions or insights. They're just playing up to whatever gets the biggest reaction

from the people of that day, right? Like, most of these people are just ball-washing. Most of them are now petrified of the fan base because the fan base has social media and can shit on them all the time, and that hurts their little psyches, so they alter their opinions to kind of parrot what the fan base feels.'s what blogs are like like basically it's an echo chamber just

like news talk radio is now an echo chamber everything is an echo chamber so I don't know what the expectations are for people as it relates to what they want from their media people to me I've just always wanted people to give me their honest opinion. And if I don't like it, fuck them. But like, I want you to be honest. I don't believe that people that turn on a microphone and talk on the radio are honest. Right. And I've seen it. I've watched it. Right. And honestly, and you could say, well, Josh, your lack or your over honesty has probably killed you probably. But I just want people to tell me what they actually think about shit. That's all I want. Like look at team broadcasts, for instance. I'm not expecting the team play by play guy to go on the air and say, you know who fucking sucks, blank and blank, and he should

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Like, I think the Phillies radio broadcast is fantastic. I think they're fair. I think Larry Anderson, who has tons of credibility, I think L.A. is capable of being critical, and I think the team accepts that. I think in Philly, you can't survive if you are a play-by-play or color analyst that doesn't offer insight as to what the fans are actually seeing, because the fans are going to tell you when you suck, they're going to tell you when you're great. So you can't be Mike Quick on the radio and sugarcoat shit. And you can't be Larry Anderson and sugarcoat shit or whoever the fuck the analysts are for the Sixers and everybody else. You can't sugarcoat shit. It doesn't work that way because people

are smart enough to know in some cities they sugarcoat shit. Like in St. Louis, it's nothing but rainbows and bullshit. Like there's no real analysis on anything. It's, it's truly pathetic. It is boring. Uh, you know, you watch a team lose, you know, 20, there were 20 games under 500, two years ago. I'm not getting any real insight from anybody. It's just fucking like just lame-o child's play shit. It's terrible. The people they hire suck. Like I'm not for that. I'm a fan of the Cardinals. Can you at least tell me something honest? Because if I'm watching a shitty team, I need you to be somewhat critical and not everything is just kind of rainbows.

I don't expect you to shit on them all the time. I don't expect you to throw a nuke, okay, or throw a bomb on them or a grenade, but at least give me some sort of legit insight. I think Andre Ware does a great fucking job with that on Texans Radio. A great job on the game broadcast. I would be listening, and I forgot the damn dude's name that he hated. I think it was a defensive back that just kept making stupid penalties. And he would shit on this guy all the time.

And I'm like, good. You need to do that. When it's warranted. Don't be over the top. Don't be Ranch Wilder in Angels in the Outfield. Anytime something good's happening, get pissed off and I can't believe this and fuck them and then get fired. I'm not asking you to do that.

But at least give me some level of honesty. And especially when we can see it with our own eyes. And we don't get that from a lot of people. And if it goes back to this gal who was sitting on press row at the national championship game, filming herself saying, oh my God, I really want to cheer. Like I'm all like, I I'm a fan, right?

But I'm also not a, a media member that's going in and interviewing people. And granted, you're probably listening to this going, Josh, you've interviewed people hammered in the locker room. Again, don't,

I'm going to dad you here, but don't do as I do do as I say, like it's not hard to be professional and do your job and the problem is we're getting too many people where the line is blurred between fan and media people and and you know I do think that we've created a world where you don't have to have a ton of credibility or experience to do these things and you end up with shit that just looks terrible. Let me give you an example. So, and this goes back to the point of the kind of lack of credibility, the kind of lack of training, just throwing people in there. Like local news outlets have very little credibility anymore. Most of the people they hire

are dreadful on television and their social medias are the worst. I think we can agree that local media, whether it be local television, local newspaper, their social media is so bad because it's all clickbait, right? It's clickbaity bullshit. And they need you to click on the story because they're all trying to hit a number of clicks on their thing. That's what happened when we were at 790 and we made a joke of it. We would tell people, we're literally just posting shit to try to get you to click. Please go click on this so we look good. We knew we weren't putting good shit up there. We knew that it was all clickbait bullshit. And we had a big TV screen that was out in the common area at the radio station. And it would show you what stories on all the station's websites were actively getting clicks. and it would update them

like every 10 seconds right so we would do a bit where we'd go on the air and say all right we just posted this story about uh here's jennifer aniston's tits or something whatever here's jennifer aniston's tits can you it was just taking something from some hot chicks instagram right like that's all we would do we We'd go to hot chick's Instagram. Oh, did you know that, what's her name? Hugh Grant's ex-old lady that's really, I'm drawing a freaking, Elizabeth Hurley. So, like, we would go to Elizabeth Hurley's Instagram a lot because Elizabeth Hurley has her own line of bathing suits that I think her husband or her son takes the pictures

for, which is kind of odd, but whatever. And she looks smoking hot she's in her mid-50s she's spectacular and we would talk about that and post the picture we would go to britney spears instagram and post videos of her doing her weird shit and then we'd ask you to go look at him and then we would send nick and i don't know if he's still in jail or not or what happened if he actually killed that person or not i have no idea how that story developed. But Nick, our phone screener, Nick would then go out and get on a phone and give us live updates about how many clicks those videos were getting. And it was just a goof, right? But we're dopey radio guys, right?

We're not legitimate news outlets who are supposed to report news. It shouldn't be a world where the number of clicks you get is vital in the success of a news station. I'm a believer that news should be not for profit anyway, because once profit gets involved, people can have their opinions altered. And this is commonplace. It happens all the time where there's somebody that's spending money as a sponsor on the news channel, and they're in the news themselves by doing something controversial, and they don't want you to talk about it. And they say, hey, can you pump the brakes on talking about blank and blank? Everybody's bought and everybody's paid for. It's all bullshit. So until news is a completely not-for-profit universe,

which it's never going to be, then you're never going to have a chance to have legitimate, unfiltered, unbiased news. And oh, by the way, people have biases. And when people have biases, you can't have unbiased opinions. But anyway, what does this all have to do with anything? Well, yesterday, we found out that Octavio Dottel died. He was in this Dominican Republic club and the ceiling collapsed. What do I always say about the Dominican Republic? There is no fucking reason to go to the Dominican Republic. Even if you are from the Dominican Republic, there is no reason to go. If you have left the Dominican Republic to play sports in America, stay the fuck in America. Not that everything great happens in America, not that the Dominican Republic is a shithole, but the Dominican Republic, if you notice, a lot of dudes who are from the Dominican Republic, baseball players, athletes, end up back in the Dominican Republic. And what ends up happening to these guys? Bad shit happens to them back in the Dominican Republic.

Oscar Taveras, who was supposed to be the Cardinals' next big thing in his early 20s, gets hammered, drives his car off a fucking mountain in the Dominican Republic. You got Octavio Dottel has the ceiling collapse. It kills him in the Dominican Republic. Is the Dominican Republic where Big Papi got shot as well and almost died? Like, bad shit happens in the Dominican Republic. Don't go. All that said, Octavio Dottel is dead. Now, when I think of Octavio Dottel, I think of the Houston Astros. Even though Octavio Dottel has played, I believe played for the most teams of any player ever. I want to say he's somewhere near 10 or 11 teams he's played for. He also won the World Series

with the Cardinals in 2011 and was very effective for them on that team when they made that push in 2011 and got into the World Series and won over Kane like the 11 games out of the wild card in August. And I always think of the Astros. I think of the early 2000s Astros, and I think of that lineup, and I think of the pitching staff, and I think of Milo Hamilton calling the games. I think of Bill Brown calling the games because in Baton Rouge, that's what we had. We had the Astros on the radio. We had the Astros on television. So that's the team I watched the most, and I enjoyed that baseball team. So Octavio Dottel is dead. Back to the idea of my steadfast rules about broadcasting. And I don't have a ton of them. Everything can kind of vary.

I take issue when people tease. And when I say tease, I mean like breaking news, promote, like would say, you know how it is when some guy's going to commercial and they tell you, you got to tease to keep people around. So, Hey, coming up, we're going to tell you why we think the Phillies suck. That's coming up next on WIPay, right? Like that kind of shit. It's a tease, right? And by that I mean, boy, somebody big just got traded. We'll tell you who next. Don't do that shit. People have every opportunity to go to every other outlet that's out there to find it out. Tell them what happened. Then you tease.

You're going to give your thoughts on it or why this is brilliant. But you don't tease that there's breaking news. Somebody will turn off the channel and they may never turn you back on. It is stupid. Do not do it. That's one of my biggest things. One of my other big things is you do not clickbait the death of somebody. You do not do that.

Or an injury to someone. You don't clickbait injuries. You don't clickbait death. And what I've learned is that local news outlets, particularly on social media, are big death clickbaiters. And I saw it yesterday here in St. Louis. Octavio Dottel dies. He's part of the 2011 Cardinals World Series team. Maybe the last Cardinals team that will ever win the World Series based on how they're trending right now. Instead of saying former Cardinals pitcher Octavio Dottel dies in tragic roof collapse in the Dominican Republic, the headlines all read, former Cardinals pitcher dies.

So then, of course, you have to click on the story to find out which Cardinal player died. And, of course, you're going to click on it, and that's how they're going to get their fucking clicks. And they use death as clickbait. Whereas if you go to ESPN's website, ESPN's website, when they confirmed it yesterday, Octavio Dottel dies and collapsed. That's what your headline should read. If people want to continue reading the story, they'll continue reading the story. What you cannot do is tease or sell or clickbait somebody's death. And I find that to be gross. I find injury clickbait to be gross. Let me give you an example. So last night, watching the Grizzlies game,

and Jalen Wells, who is their rookie guard, who's had a really good season, will probably finish top three or four in the Rookie of the Year. He takes a nasty fucking hit and falls on his face, and as it turns out, he breaks his wrist and has some facial injuries. It was fucking nasty. He had to be stretchered off the field. They had to get the paramedics in. It was fucking scary. People were crying. USA Today headline reads, NBA rookie

stretchered off court after scary fall. That should not be the headline because this is a scary fall and somebody had to be stretchered off the court. The headline should read, Grizzlies rookie Jalen Wells stretchered off court after scary fall. It should not be, well, oh my God, which rookie is it? I have to see. I must click on it. That's not the case. But I'm looking at four stories that are all lined up on the USA Today website right now. Dominican Republic roof collapse kills two MLB alumni. What we know that should not be the headline. The headline should say Dominican Republic roof collapse kills Octavio Dottel or former MLB or former MLBers Octavio Dottel and Tony Blanco. That's what the headline should read. When people die or people are seriously injured,

we don't click bait it. And then you scroll down. NBA rookie stretchered off court after scary fall. We don't click bait injuries. But what's funny is then you go down to the last story and it says, Luka Doncic ejected from Lakers loss versus Thunder. Why aren't we putting Lakers star ejected from game against Thunder? Why are we putting Luka in the headline there?

You know why? Because Octavio Dottel is not a big enough name and Jalen Wells is not a big enough name to put in the headline. That's why. Luka is a huge name. So if they see Luke in the headline, well, maybe I'll just stop and read that anyway. Octavio Dottel has to be listed as former MLB player because Octavio Dottel was a journeyman reliever who died in the Dominican Republic.

Therefore, Octavio Dottel doesn't get his name in the headline for his death. We have to click to find out who died. We have to click the story. He's not important enough. It's the same thing as the in-memoriam that you see at the Oscars when, hey, Harrison Ford's in the in-memoriam, but we'll skip Carrot Top or whomever. You know what I'm saying? That's just how this shit works.

It's the bigger name, and that's what's gross about the whole situation. What's gross is we don't care that somebody died we just care they're big enough name like I guarantee if you look at when Kobe died and again Kobe's one of the biggest stars ever so maybe it's not fair but when Kobe died and Kobe was in a helicopter crash and we were waiting to see if Kobe was dead I guarantee you the headline at USA Today did not say former Lakers star feared dead in helicopter crash. It probably said Kobe Bryant feared dead in helicopter crash. But you wanted to make sure someone clicked this story about Octavio Dottel. So you leave it vague and you say,

well, uh, former ML beers, it's bullshit. It is absolute shit. And it pisses me off. Like I just, again,

I'm not huge on etiquette because i've done things differently than some people rich used to shit on me because i'd sometimes use my media pass to go to games and and just go up and eat the food in the press box and then leave and go cheer for the team like that's fine like and that's fair like criticize me if you want to do that for that i'm fine with that i've not i have not done things like by the book, okay? But to me, when someone's dead, don't clickbait the story. And that's what you get from these fucking local hacks.

And that's the problem is they hire a bunch of dipshits and these dipshits are paid to get clicks. And local news is dead anyway. No one gives a fuck about it. The people on the news are terrible. Anyway, all right, more to come.