I was intrigued by a recent column on ESPN's Web site written by Jemele Hill. Hill was opining on the issue of women reporters conducting interviews in the men's locker room with male athletes. So, the image is of male athletes coming of the shower and half naked with cameras, recorders, notepads, microphones and reporters in their faces and crowded around them. I will provide the link so the story can be read ... thus I will not go to deeply into the particulars of her specific argument (you can read that for yourself). What I will say, however, is that the issue is intriguing to me for several reasons: (1) Why do reporters come into the locker room to interview athletes anyway while they are still changing? (2) Why are athletes not made available outside of the locker room after they have changed? My biggest question, however, is this one: (3) How would we feel if there were male reporters crowded into a locker room during the U.S. Open interviewing a half-naked Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova or Anna Kournikova in the locker room? I wonder how comfortable people would feel about such a situation. Would female athletes be as comfortable with such a situation as, say, Pistons star point guard Chauncey Billups might be sitting in his locker room stall topless with male and female reporters in his face grilling him with questions? Personally, I think the locker room should be off limit to reporters, but athletes should be compelled to face the media and not be allowed to escape through some back door of the locker room that leads out of the arena and away from the crowds of the press. Facing the media, the conduit to the fans, is a small price for athletes to pay for hundreds of thousand dollars to millions of dollars they make on the backs of hard-working men and women.
ESPN article:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=hill/080806
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