After ATP champion and world no. 16 Reilly Opelka declared last year that the tennis media is “the worst” and “awful”, tennis journalists and their methods have come under scrutiny.
Take a look at this famous or infamous quote about the dishonesty of the media…
Scottish American journalist and publisher John Swinton’s press dinner speech 1883 in New York City… “There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with (New York Sun). Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before twenty-four hours: my occupation would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is about the same — his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an “Independent Press”! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
This quote by Swinton from over a century ago, if completely true, would indicate that the tennis media – and all mainstream media – are controlled operations – and which targets they “villify”, villainize, and demonize may actually be victims of a corrupt entity with political agendas.
So it’s very possible the recent targets of the tennis media – Novak Djokovic and Alexander Zverev – may actually be victims of certain agendas by the people who own and control the media. And that tennis is not played on a level playing field or reported on with pure obective honesty.
Just keep that in mind the next time you read an attack article or social media backstab post on Novak or Zverev.