It’s not secret that the Chicago Bears have traditionally maintained an adversarial relationship with the media. In recent years, it’s become even WORSE. During our second annual bracket of douchitude, the champion of my region, the #3 seeded Chicago Bears Media Relations Dept, won the whole thing. The readers have spoken, and the votes came in against them overwhelmingly. Their Final Four match-up against Tea Party members was actually a shut out in their favor.
So this is more evidence that it’s not just the media who abhor the Bears’ Soviet Unionlike obsession with message control. The fans are disgusted by it as well. We all know how useless Bears press conferences are, but now they’re trying to take steps towards making all media coverage of them obsolete. They recently implemented new, ridonkulously restrictive guidelines on the press These guidelines, of course, do not apply to the PR flaks, the Bears call “reporters.” You know, those douches who sit in on press conferences and ask the players softball questions.
By Paul M. Banks
The new guidelines come to us via Scout Network and John Crist Publisher of Bear Report. He’s been an interview guest on this site, and he’s a very trusted and valued source. Here’s some of the guidelines he posted, and his commentary.
Guideline No. 8: Loitering in the hallway or lobby at any time (during open locker room or practice availabilities) is prohibited.
During the season, media are allowed into the locker room at Halas Hall from 12:15 to 1:00 on Wednesdays and Thursdays. More often than not, it is just about empty once reporters start to file in, as players may be eating lunch, lifting weights or getting taped up before practice. Not by coincidence, the players tend to migrate back toward their lockers around 12:58, knowing full well that members of the press must vacate shortly. To combat this, some media will hang around in the hallway between the lunch room and the locker room in order to grab that precious interview. That is now forbidden, so unless the media relations staff makes a better effort to get players into the locker room during that 45-minute period, quotes will be tougher to get.
Crist lists four more of these guidelines, and there are six more that he didn’t publish. To read the rest and to see his commentary go here. I couldn’t agree any more with this statement Crist made in his piece:
“Coming off three straight years missing the playoffs, and with criticism firing from all angles both locally and nationally as a result, it appears the Bears are trying to control the message more than ever.”