Master of her domain? (Roberto Dell’Olivo)

Tennis player Naomi Osaka has withdrawn from the French Open after saying that she would not participate in mandatory press conferences. Osaka considers the conferences to be bad for her mental health and focus, causing her “huge waves of anxiety.”

I don’t think many athletes like doing media, but in most cases, like this one, they are contractually bound. It is then part of their job if not part of any competition. In most ways this seems to me to be a pissing match between a star athlete and the tournament about who needs the other most and I don’t care who wins. What I find more interesting is what’s being said about the contretemps in the press.

In general the media response has been quite supportive of Osaka, though she has certainly had her critics. I found a few articles written in Osaka’s defence noteworthy though for how they characterize what is going on.

Cate Young concludes by finding the whole thing a little old fashioned in 2021. “In a landscape where most public figures have a direct line of access to their fans and supporters, the traditional media conference is nothing more than an outdated formality. If sports media wants to prove its necessity, it needs to demonstrate that it can do something an athlete with an Instagram account can’t.” For his part, Chris Jones congratulates Osaka on being part of “a huge transfer of power from fusty, historically patriarchal institutions, be they Broadway Leagues, awards committees, movie studios or governing bodies of sports, to individuals, especially those who have allied themselves with the struggles of their fans.”

Jemele Hill, continuing the theme of how progressive all this is, puts Osaka in the company of other Black athletes, particularly NBA players. She mentions Kyrie Irving as one such, as he had been fined for not speaking to the media, saying that he wanted “to perform in a secure and protected space.”

The nagging suspicion that leagues and reporters alike fundamentally misunderstand athletes of color makes these athletes still more determined to cultivate their own image with fans. That’s why so many prominent athletes — including the NBA stars Russell Westbrook, LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and Kevin Durant — have opted to launch their own media companies. With their massive social-media followings, they can take their message directly to the public. Many of them don’t need press conferences to promote or build their brands, and the establishment is having trouble adjusting to the new normal, in which it can’t make players do what it wants simply because that’s the way things have always been done.

The issues that Osaka has raised aren’t going away. These days athletes would much rather tell their own stories than let reporters do it for them. Not long ago, players couldn’t win any power struggles against the media, much less their own league. Now they can.

Does this sound familiar? A celebrity with a (real or imagined) grievance at how they are being treated by the mainstream or established media leverages their fame to take their message and brand directly “to the people” by way of “their massive social-media followings.” In doing so they hope to establish “a secure and protected space” and control the narrative around their brand.

Yes, it’s the Trump playbook. Remember that Trump just wanted to be treated fairly. He just wanted to protect himself. He would still appear on Fox News, just as Osaka clarified that she was OK “with all the cool journalists.” If one is forced to deal with the press, it’s best if they’re the tame variety.

Three points stand out from these interpretations of the Osaka affair.

In the first place, both Young and Hill make this into a pissing match not between an athlete and her sport’s governing bodies but between a celebrity and the media. Why? What did the media do wrong in attending these admittedly silly dog-and-pony shows? Are they responsible for Osaka’s anxiety? Aren’t they just doing their job? A job, I might add, that few of them enjoy any more than the athletes.

The second thing I find remarkable is that Young, Jones, and Hill represent the mainstream media. Jones is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune and Hill was writing in The Atlantic, which is about as traditional or establishment as you can get. That is, they are going out of their way to slam their own side while championing Twitter. At what point does this denigration of the media stop?

Finally I want to express my concern at the way a widespread anger at and distrust of the media has become cover for those in positions of wealth and power who want to take control of the way they’re presented. To ask the obvious question: Who wouldn’t “much rather tell their own stories than let reporters do it for them”? How brave is Osaka in ditching press conferences for social media platforms where, as Jones puts it, “she can control the conversation without risk to herself”?

Everyone wants that kind of control. But who has that privilege? Only the most powerful. Billionaires. Those with “massive social-media followings.” Celebrities who own their own media companies.

I recently updated an earlier post I’d made about the way celebrities seek to control their public image, in particular through their dealings with biographers — which may be said to be the ultimate example of controlling one’s narrative. I’ve made it clear what I think of this. I’m left to wonder if Young sees a difference between a press conference and an Instagram post, or if Hill considers it a good thing that athletes (or powerful people more generally) can now crush the media and control their image and narrative. Does she feel the same about Bill Cosby or Donald Trump doing this as she does about Kyrie Irving and Naomi Osaka?

I have as many misgivings about the media as the next person, but I’ll take the side of professional journalists asking questions, even the same ones, however many times, over that of celebrities looking to cultivate their brand on social media. The wealthiest and most privileged among us are in no need of a safe space. Journalism, as the old saw has it, is writing stuff that someone doesn’t want you to write. Everything else is advertising. I’m afraid that if this sort of thinking is allowed to continue then advertising is all we’re going to have left.

Looks bright and shiny. But what is it?

A recent news report out of the UK had the police raiding a property in the Midlands with suspiciously high energy usage. They figured it was a grow-op. Instead, it turned out to be a bitcoin mine.

I’ve never given a lot of thought to cryptocurrencies, but this piqued my interest. There are a lot of primers and basic introductions to the subject online so I tried to get somewhat up to speed. I was not entirely successful. I still don’t know what, exactly, a blockchain is, or what bitcoin mining involves. Yes, the former is a ledger and the second refers to the process of validating transactions (which is what I believe takes so much energy), but that doesn’t help a lot.

As with anything involving a lot of tech, a lot of money, and a lot of secrecy, I am suspicious of all of this. “Cutting out the middleman” and facilitating faster financial transactions may be of some value, but they don’t seem like really pressing needs for anyone. Meanwhile, avoiding any oversight is the kind of thing mostly bad actors want to take advantage of.

We know a lot of sketchy businesses exploit the crypto part of cryptocurrency, as it keeps shady dealings hidden in dark markets. Throw in the energy consumption (with cryptomining generating some 22 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, which is as much as some small countries), and illicit cryptomining (through “permissionless blockchains”) and I’m not sure why governments aren’t cracking down more.

But as I said, it’s a subject I know little about. Given that this is where things are heading I’m going to try to learn more. Not to invest in bitcoins but to better understand what’s going on.

Reports have recently surfaced that Bill Gates befriended the notorious Jeffrey Epstein in the hopes of being given an award somewhere down the line. And not just any award. According to an ex-staffer at the Gates Foundation “He [Gates] thought that Jeffrey would be able to help him, that he would know the right people or some kind of way to massage things, so he could get the Nobel Peace Prize.”

I think a story like this just underlines how silly the business of such awards is. They are subjective, and what’s more based on whatever the whims of a handful of not very knowledgeable or well-informed individuals happens to be feeling at the moment. Of course Barack Obama had done absolutely nothing to deserve a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 except replace George W. Bush as president, but that was enough at that particular historical moment.

But the Nobel name, for no good reason whatsoever, continues to have enough cachet to make people like Bill Gates, who should know better, want to pursue it. I gave up long ago trying to find any rhyme or reason to the Nobel Prize in Literature. But why should there be any rhyme or reason? The handful of members of the Swedish Academy who do the picking might as well be throwing darts at a wall as naming some writer whose work they will in most cases be entirely unfamiliar with. Bob Dylan one year. Kazuo Ishiguro the next.

I don’t understand why anyone still buys into this, or into prize culture in general. Such awards are in no way, and never have been, meant to provide any kind of objective or even rational assessment of achievement. They continue only as a way of credentialing celebrity or the professionally well-connected and as an exercise in branding. Bill Gates should have just been allowed to buy a Nobel Prize for a billion dollars, and the money given to charity.