Amanda Lanzarini Mrs.

Marr JOR 115 Unfair Game The WFAA team acted as an independent monitor of power through their investigation of the Dallas Kimball Knights. By putting aside the need to please others alongside any personal prejudices concerning the sport, the team could focus entirely on learning why this school had so many consistent wins and expose the injustice that lay in what should have been a harmless basketball season. The reporters were acting on their watchdog principle described by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in their article, Journalists Must Serve as an Independent Monitor of Power. By keeping in check not only the government but all those that have power, journalists like Brett Shipp perform their role for the public in reporting not just news, but corruption. Citizens now will realize the unethical way their highschool in Dallas was manipulating the system to treat amateur basketball like a business. Given the laws that were broken and ignored just to afford wins in games, it matters greatly to the citizens to know how situations like these are handled or will be corrected. Other sports teams will benefit from the news just as much, understanding now that the Dallas Knights took their games too far to be considered fair to other competitors. The investigation serves not only to be sure underground crimes do not go unnoticed, but to inform the people of the injustices that could be occurring to them in their own neighborhood. Specifically, the mother of Keith Frazier drew my attention. She blatantly lied not only to the school board concerning the reason of her move out of Cedar Hills but also to the reporter conducting the investigation that would clearly have found out her motives through actual documentation. Her quotes were nearly laughable considering she was never told to leave her home since it was never up

for sale. In actuality, she had broke her lease to move to Kimball. What also stood out to me were the inputs of others in the investigation that knew of the recruiting that happened, but did nothing about it. Claire Oliver at North Dallas HS stated I know that recruiting goes on in DISD. These cases simply go to show that reporters are needed to pull out facts others may not be able to do much with on their own. It is evident that Unfair Game reporters had a difficult time obtaining needed information. Given how the reporter had to track down the mother at a game with a camera indicates that she must have been unwilling to meet otherwiseespecially considering her denials of his questions. Whats more, Twitter was needed to be used as a branch of communication to gather evidence of the mothers true thoughts on the matter of the basketball deals occurring to her and other children. Information also had to be pulled from tapes of previous school meetings and documents from the mothers lease on her home, all which could not have taken little time to gather. To be absolutely sure of ones facts is undoubtedly why so much proof was collected and questioned repeatedlyeven when officials denied to speak about the issue specifically. Investigative reporting is a serious dedication; that is what I learned from the series. Difficulty in obtaining a possible story aside, just being able to get the information needed is a challenge. Under the circumstances where even professionals will not wish to meet and elaborate on future corrections to the matter, how can the public be assured following the story that justice will be imposed? In addition, it seemed there were little who cared for the matter to be exposed to begin with, especially the mother of Keith Frazier. Its almost as if reporters make more enemies than they do supporters despite their work being for the good of the public. Even as someone who cares very little for sports competitions, I was able to appreciate the work that was detailed in the investigation and consider any situation that breaks the law for personal gain newsworthy, even if it isnt the most interesting.