Florida State received some good news Monday night as sophomore running back and last season’s leading rusher Dalvin Cook was found not guilty on charges of misdemeanor battery. While the ruling is an obvious shot in the arm to the Seminoles, the way in which was covered and talked about highlight a number of growing problems on how news is covered in society today and how reactionary those who follow it really are.
The whole saga with Cook and accusations against him have been intertwined with the recent case against former quarterback De’Andre Johnson and the video that depicts Johnson punching a female student. This is obviously unfair for, if nothing else, the clear attempt to draw a connection between Johnson’s guilt and Cook’s supposed actions.
Many have been led to believe that Cook is guilty just because of his role with the Florida State football team. Nevermind the fact that they were two different people in different classes with different circumstances around their accusations — people had already asserted Cook committed the crime and if you were to deny that, you were to deny reality.
Par for the course, the usual media pundits sprouted up and sprinted to the oven for a first claim on the hot takes. A popular phrase was to claim that Jimbo Fisher let a “culture” permeate his program, while others stuck to the same “he’s guilty because he was accused” mantra.
The frenzy was egged on in part because of ESPN, specifically Mark Schlabach and his report that Cook would get charged with misdemeanor battery. After taking the accusers at their word, Schlabach chose to include some of Cook’s previous run-ins with the law which included…BB guns and knowing guys who owned a gun. This is indeed the same Schlabach who was accused by David Cornwell of being fed information in the Jameis Winston case from the accuser’s attorneys and running with it as the proven truth.
In fact, just recently in the case of Art Briles and the controversy surrounding Baylor, he tweeted part of a statement from Washington head coach Chris Petersen. His wording makes it seem like Petersen told Briles of possible violent incidents, but the statement says none of that. Schlabach literally added the “violent past” part himself.
Of course, this isn’t exactly surprising for those who have watched how the national media treats these types of stories. Schlabach is hardly alone in misleading people and is simply a product of sensationalism being prevalent.
He (and many others) understands that there is more to be milked from controversy rather than objective assessments. People don’t want to hear about how there are two sides to every story. They instead want to hear about how there might be a conspiracy in a town that lets criminals on the loose. It’s entertaining to read and it leaves no room for perspective on any given situation. If you’re unlucky enough to be the subject of these attacks, God help you.
Dalvin Cook is one of these people. The minute he was accused of punching someone, his past was fair game to anyone who wanted it. BB gun incidents suddenly became a data point along a trend of someone that would hit a woman. It stopped being about the accusation of battery and started being about himself as a person. Andy Staples of Sports Illustrated ran a story that included Cook’s juvenile record where two charges against him were dropped. Why?
We don’t know and probably never will. That’s irrelevant to the intent and purpose of bringing it up. To his credit, Staples made sure to point out that plenty of other programs wanted him and had no trouble with offering a scholarship and official visits. But it’s hard to explain bringing it up without admitting that one wants to paint a picture of someone in a negative light.
Cook’s decisions at 14 and 15 years old had apparently opened him up to this sort of slander. Whether or not he had actually punched the girl had taken a backseat to the prevailing discussion around his moral character. After all, someone who made a dumb decision at that age would probably attack someone right? Do the facts of the specific case really even matter?
For many, they do not. For these people, Dalvin Cook has ceased to be a person that should be granted due process. Any context given to his upbringing or his previous actions is not welcomed in the firestorm that is the national media. For these people, Cook is guilty and it was decided long before any court ruling or investigation. He’s just one of them — not a college-age kid, not an athlete, not any of that.
In between bizarre racial undertones and general attacks on the university, Florida State has seen the brunt of media muckraking made worse by the social media age. The speed at which news travels means that “waiting it out” is no longer a viable option for high-profile programs. Accusations must be assumed to be true because if action is taken later, the hindsight warriors come out of the woodwork.
There were people legitimately arguing that it’d be better to kick Cook off the team rather than wait for a decision regarding the case. Why this has become such a problem in college football could have many different answers. Without going too much into the possible angles, it’s just best to assume that the common profile of a college football player most likely has something to do with it.
It’s something that many fans don’t know how to deal with until it hits their own school. Sure, the pitchforks and the torches seem nice when it’s not your village they’re running through. Trying to wait for more facts to come out puts one at a disadvantage, because limited information almost always leans to a certain side.
This is true for almost any controversy in the college football world that gets broadcasted on a larger scale. To make it relevant for Seminole fans: How many people who believe Jameis Winston is guilty could give a very basic rundown of the case? If they were asked questions like “Did bruises indicate rape?” or “Was the accuser drugged?” would they be able to answer correctly? Would they even know who people like Jason Newlin are? Probably not, because that information was not conveyed accurately throughout the episode. This common obfuscation and the nature of modern news reporting has combined to make guilt the default judgement for any case involving not just FSU players, but athletes in general.
So what does one do?
Truth be told, that can’t be fully answered in one article. Full arguments could be laid out and logic resembling the prisoner’s dilemma might naturally form. The seemingly fairest options would either be neutrality (neither believe nor disbelieve an accusation) or presumption of innocence (status quo until proven otherwise).
Obviously, it is too far gone for many cases to be treated this way — the Cook story went to trial. But there is something to be said for the people that prefer to wait and understand that brands of yellow journalism don’t really help anyone. One might think that incidents involving someone at 14 would have no bearing on any incidents at 19, but for some reason, that’s not a given in modern reporting.
On Monday, August 24th, Dalvin Cook was found not guilty of misdemeanor battery. The jurors deliberated for around 20 minutes and delivered the verdict before the sun had even set. One spoke to the Tallahassee Democrat and quipped “…it’s a shame it went to trial”.
There was so little evidence and so much questionable testimony on both sides that the only conclusion any jury could come to is not guilty. Does that mean Cook is completely innocent? Technically no. It just means they didn’t have enough evidence to say beyond a reasonable doubt that he punched a woman outside of a bar.
This gives many people (including a lot of national media members) the leeway to say “well, you can’t prove he didn’t” and thus never being held accountable for what they’ve said. Dalvin Cook is still the guy who may have punched a girl in the face and his actions are simply part of the “culture” of Florida State football.
How fair.
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