“Journalists must mind their own business”, “you don’t disgust a player who has just scored two goals”, “let go of the players”.
These are some examples of the hundreds of contemptuous comments that have been published on social networks and aimed at our journalist Dave Lévesque.
His crime was to have asked Cole Caufield if it was starting to play on the players’ heads to lose so often against the Senators, and this, after last Saturday night’s defeat where Cole scored two goals.
Drooling, Caufield responded in English: “It’s great.”
A CH fan media published the video extract on X (formerly Twitter) describing Dave’s question as “thick”.
The site Danslescoulisses, which constantly criticizes the traditional media for being too nice to the Canadian, also published a text which, ironically, scolded our journalist, because he had asked a question that was not nice enough for poor Cole.
“Journalists don’t need to remind them that they lose regularly”, could we read in the article.
Obviously, this text was a great success for the site. Internet users went all out to screw our journalist. Danslescoulisses published another text by another editor saying that our journalist’s question was ultimately correct. But it was too late. The first text had already made the rounds.
Dave is not smart
First of all, Dave is doing great. He is in a good mood. He saw others. It goes 100 feet over his head. He was already working at Newspaper when Caufield was learning to walk.
The Canadian had just lost his 9e back-to-back game against the Senators. His question was perfect. Dave is a journalist. Not a representative of the CH fan club, not an employee of the Canadiens, nor of the NHL. Its role is not to protect or knock out a player. It’s fair to ask the questions that fans who love or not love CH would also like to ask.
You can’t love sports journalism only when you agree with the subject. Sports journalism goes in all directions, yours or not. Otherwise, just follow the Montreal Canadiens website. You can gargle with sappy topics about the team.
And Caufield can very well respond dryly. It happens to all of us. I have no problem with that. If it was like this every night, it would be different. But a journalist has the right to ask questions, just as a player has the right not to want to answer them.
Nothing ruthless
Following Dave’s question, I even read Internet users who indicated that “this was exactly why free agents did not want to go to Montreal.”
Batinsse! Questions in general shouldn’t be that bad, if when there was one that wasn’t so bitchy (Dave’s) it shocked so many fans.
I worked as a journalist at the National Assembly and experienced press scrums with the best in my profession. It’s far from a simple task. And we must understand that the journalist does not ask a question by telling himself that he is on TV and that he must look good. He asks a question to try to get an interesting answer. A question may seem very simple or “silly”, but it was perhaps the best question to ask to bring the athlete or a politician to the subject we are aiming for. It’s not that obvious.