Atlanta Hawks Owner Exposes His Own Racist Email
The owner of the Atlanta Hawks, Bruce Levenson, has recently exposed a personal private email from August of 2012, causing much surprise among NBA fans. Not only did he make one of his personal emails public, but he also announced that he would be selling his controlling stake in the team. This raises a lot of suspicion for a number of reasons. Why is this email relevant? Why did he wait so long to expose it? CNN explores some potential reasons why here.
After reading the email, it became clear to me that Levenson was very unhappy about the current state of his teams fan-base. He stated, “My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a significant season ticket base”. Much of the email speaks about general stadium business, while the rest focuses on his teams fan demographic and how he wants it to change. Multiple times in the email, he compares the percentage of blacks in attendance to that of other teams, and makes the point that the Hawks have more than four times the amount of the NBA average. The most upsetting thing was his tone of disapproval and disgust at the race of the fans in attendance.
CNN.com is where I obtained this article, and they present their information in a very credible way. Based on the article topic, their target audience are NBA fans, or Atlanta Hawks fans more specifically. They tailor to this audience in an effective way because the information deals with the NBA directly, and they reference similar events that have happened previously in the league (Donald Sterling). Along with the news article, they had a video to explain the events with multiple reporters, a written article, and the original email sent by Bruce Levenson to Danny Ferry. I’d say this article exhibits ethos, based on the prestige of the CNN network. Generally, something read from a major news network like this is very credible. Another rhetorical appeal more or less exhibited here is pathos, because of the anger and outrage it inspires. For the most part, the general public doesn’t take to racism too kindly and will react in a negative way.
Video
http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/07/us/atlanta-hawks-owner-bruce-levenson-racist-email/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Levenson’s Email:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/07/us/nba-hawks-levenson-racist-email/index.html
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I too have been following this story, and I believe it falls in the category of “Yes, this is true, but to be honest, who cares?” I’ve seen a ton of sports stories from the past few years about someone exposing a fact that is irrelevant to their duties. A similar story is Michael Sam. Yes, he is gay, but the fact that the sports analysists keep pointing it out adds to the problem. He is gay, but we shouldn’t care. Same story here. Yes, the Hawks probably do have an overwhelmingly black fan base. But who the hell cares? That’s just how it is for that specific team in Atlanta. It shouldn’t matter whatsoever.
I agree with your opinion of CNN as well. They are very credible and stay away from biases more often than not. They always keep articles updated with facts as they come in, so they do exhibit a strong ethos appeal.