You may have heard of or even seen the Indianapolis Star article about the Duke men’s basketball team last week.
Being the site of the Final Four and National Championship this year, there was a responsibility on the area newspaper to cover all of the teams in the running; West Virginia, Michigan State, Butler and Duke.
A sports reporter for the Star wrote up an article called “Despising Duke” which looked at some of the reasons why Duke is a polarizing team that is usually either hated or loved.
The controversy came when the graphic created for the article (not by the journalist himself) went perhaps a bit too far in portraying the idea of hating Duke.
Here’s a link to the original newspaper page - http://i.usatoday.net/communitymanager/_photos/campus-rivalry/2010/04/02/coachkx-large.jpg?loc=interstitialskip
As you can see, the graphic is supposed to emulate what a Duke despiser might do to a picture of the “Duke ambassador”, Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski with a pen.
The idea isn’t too bad, but the execution was very questionable. The bullseye on the head, in particular, brought a lot of criticism to the Star, and they pulled the image from their subsequent editions.
Duke is pursuing the matter, and is none too pleased.
This is a prime example of a newspaper or media outlet making themselves (in this case, probably unwittingly) part of the story.
It should be obvious why this one is a problem.
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