Bettman uses radio show to make his case (Bruce Dowbiggin)

It’s a bully pulpit his fellow sports commissioners wish they had. Every Thursday, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman hosts his own private klatch on The NHL Hour on Sirius XM Radio. For the most part, Bettman has played harmless interlocutor on his program, hockey’s version of Art Linkletter asking, “Don’t players say the darnedest things?”

But with Jim Balsillie at the door, Bettman has used the unfettered radio access to talk over the heads of conventional media to fans. Bettman plays the reasonable fixer, the man who only wants solutions, not conflict in Phoenix.

via sports.theglobeandmail.com: Bettman uses radio show to make his case.

Horrors! That evil nasty Gary Bettman is taking his message to the fans, rather than doing what he should do, which is allow the media people like Bruce Dowbiggin take the message and reshape and filter it so that it promotes the opinion wants us to hear. The scum, that Bettman.

He had me at “bully pulpit”, folks. Dowbiggin’s primary gripe here seems to be that Bettman’s bully pulpit is making it harder for people like Dowbiggin to use theirs.

Oh, and hint to other sports commissioners: any of you can do what Bettman did. Point it, Bettman did it. And, of course, the people who don’t want the fans to hear Bettman’s message directly and want to be able to spin it and alter it before you hear it hate this idea… Evidently in the mind of some, the only people allowed to talk directly to the fans are people like, well, Dowbiggin. Who, I guess is trying to convince us he would never, well, spin an opinion at his fans. He’s purely objective. Just like in this article.

(phhhttt. yeah, right).

(hat tip: Kukla)

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