Detroit Media Distorts Tiger Stadium Issue Beyond Recognition

This post is not about the "impending death" of Tiger Stadium. First of all, its demolition is just about as impending as it was when we were told demolition would take place last summer. Detroit's city council voted last week to tear down the stadium, but they immediately followed that vote with a vote NOT to turn ownership of the old ballpark over to the quasi-public agency in charge of redevelopment. Huh?

To hear it from the local (yokel) media outlets:

1. The stadium will be torn down soon! (Don't ask when or what portions will be saved or what exactly is going in it's place.)

2. Everybody except for a few sentimental crazies wants to get rid of Tiger Stadium!

Distorted reports and editorials have appeared in the Detroit News, Free Press and on local TV stations like WDIV.

- In an editorial on Tuesday, July 31, the Detroit News made the false claim that "every" proposal to save the stadium has lacked financing plans. The editorialist notes that the city is paying $25,000 per month to secure the building, but fails to mention that demolishing the stadium will cost millions of dollars. The upcoming hole in the city's budget on item-line "Tiger Stadium Demolition" is estimated at $4-6 million. That's only if neglected relics from inside the stadium (such as dugout urinals) fetch tons of money at auction. If they don't fetch tons of money?

Hey, speaking of holes, the editorial also omits mention of the vast open space that will be located where the stadium is currently located because there is no development scheduled to be built in its place. Shrugging this issue off, the editorialist writes:
"Developers who see value in the Corktown land have been reluctant to act because they don't want to be the party responsible for tearing down the ballpark."

Yeah, you know how developers are so very sensitive to the needs of surrounding communities. I bet that's why the proposed Wal-Mart never came through.

- On July 26, the Free Press suggested that all the stadiums "neighbors" (read: Corktown yuppies) want the stadium demolished.

"In Detroit's Corktown neighborhood Wednesday, people who live or work near the old ballpark said they were ready for something new."

The stadium also straddles the Briggs community. I have not seen an article where Briggs residents are asked their opinion about this issue. Why must Corktown yuppies be the only sources ever solicited for the "local" opinion? Are the reporters paid to report this story too lazy or too scared to walk over the Cochrane St. bridge and talk to people immediately to the north? Are they too poor to formulate opinions north of the stadium?

- Perhaps the most offensive bit of distortion came from the local NBC affiliate. When broadcasting legend Ernie Harwell made a plea for the city council to delay voting on the issue until their September meeting, they neglected to mention the main point of his speech: delay the vote so that a new proposal to convert the building into a smaller baseball stadium with a Detroit music museum could be heard.

They selectively quoted from Mr. Harwell:

"The old stadium has stood there like the house by the side of the road for a long, long time now," Harwell told the council. "There's been a lot of going back and forth, a lot of bitterness and acrimony. We want to try to eliminate that and move on. We've had some ideas. Mr. Spicer has studied this situation and we think there are viable solutions."

While WDIV omitted his position from their coverage, the freep chose to distort it, only quoting him saying:

"If we can’t (save part of it), we’ll have to keep Tiger Stadium in our memory, our mind and our heart, and cherish it that way."

It's disingenuous to present this as a simple choice of demolition vs. continued abandonment, which is what nearly every local news outlet has done. Today, like last year, the plan for the "impending" demolition is about as transparent as how that $2.6 million stadium maintenance fund got spent. Uh.